Book Review: Elia Kazan, A Life
Paul
Kazan has written a stunningly truthful autobiography that should be
read and savored. Here is "Gadge" an icon of mid-century American
theatre and film spilling it out all over the page. From his
unfulfilled teenaged longings for blonde American girls, to his first
marriage in which he felt trapped, but stayed on and on, to the many
affairs he indulged in, all are chronicled almost too graphically, but
from a distinctly detached (a writer's?) point of view. One doesn't
feel that he loved or even liked any of them.
But so what? Here's a man who could brilliantly direct both
"Streetcar" and "Salesman" in the space of a few years and then go to
Hollywood and deal successfully with the likes of Darryl Zanuck and
the 20th Century Fox grind-them-out-fast film factory. The Hollywood
stuff is both funny and refreshingly honest. Who else has dared to
challenge the Spencer Tracy was and remains the greatest screen actor
legend? And then there's the deadly little aside about Marilyn Monroe
giving him a not-so-subtle look as she sat quietly beside her then
mentor, Johnny Green. The sainted Tracy as an out of shape, lazy and
not very dedicated actor, and the "vulnerable" Marilyn as a cunningly
on-the-make tart who would have traded in her devoted agent for the
famous director, given the slightest encouragement, are just two minor
examples of the fascinating insights that appear on almost every page.
It's a very fat book. It had to be. Kazan was in his eighties when he
wrote it and he's led an extremely full life. It was a long and
winding road from the Group Theatre to that uncomfortable, halting
appearance at the 1999 Academy Awards cermonies. They made him (and
the latest wife) wait until almost the very end, but he made it
through. And there was Nick Nolte remaining seated and staring mean
and hard at this fragile old man. And there, too, was a smiling Warren
Beatty rising graciously and applauding. He redeemed himself that
night. I'm sure the old man noticed.
Dale and Mysti Berry
Paul wrote:
I can understand why some might want to forgive old crimes based on
talent and age, despite severity of crime and apparent lack of apology
for the lives he destroyed, and why some can't forgive. Perhaps Nick
knew one of the people whose life was ruined, and perhaps Beatty knew
from his research for Reds that when a state oppresses individuals,
individuals often don't have a good choice to make.
I am not comfortable judging him at all. I've never been in the spot he
was in, I don't know why he did what he did, though I like to believe I
would have stood up to the HUAC, you never know until you are on the hot
seat...
For anyone who is unclear on the details, an executive summary follows,
from http://www.movies101.com/HONORINGELIAKAZAN.HTML:
But there are a number of film people who are outraged at the award.
They feel that Kazan forfeited any right to the Oscar because of an
episode that happened forty-seven years ago. In April of 1952, at the
height of the McCarthy era, Kazan went before the House Un-American
Activities Committee and informed on eight old friends and film
colleagues, telling the Committee that back in the thirties they had
joined the Communist Party, when he himself was a member, and that these
old film friends could be considered a threat to the United States.
If you were around then, or have any sense of American history, you
know that naming names, in the McCarthy era, was the kiss of death for
those who were named. Kazan knew that no studio would hire them, for
fear of offending the political leaders who were behind the Red scare,
that they would be blacklisted from every possible kind of work in
Hollywood, and in fact that some or all of them would go to jail. Why
would they go to jail? It wasn't against the law to have been a
Communist; it never has been. The Constitution has always protected us
against prosecution for our beliefs and associations. The answer is that
they, and a number of other film people, refused to declare before
Congress whether they were or were not Communists, standing on their
constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment not to incriminate
themselves. So then of course they were cited for contempt of Congress
for refusing to answer, and ten of them -- the famous Hollywood Ten --
actually served time in jail. They, and many others, were blacklisted in
the movie business for as much as twenty years afterward.
Now apart from the question of whether any of those Kazan named --
film and theatre writers, actors, and directors -- were in any sense a
threat to the United States, there is for me the much larger moral
question of whether Kazan, or anyone, should do what he did, and then
pay no price for having done it.
So why is this important now? Because Kazan to this day has never even
acknowledged that what he did was immoral, or had consequences, or even
that the eight he named were not in fact threats to the security of this
country. He destroyed the careers of eight men and their families who,
let's remember, had never so much as committed a crime in their lives.
They, along with many many others, including Kazen, had joined the
Communist Party in the 1930s, during the depression, when it seemed that
the capitalist vision was destroying America and all it stood for. None
of them was ever a spy, nor an espionage agent, nor certainly in any
sense a traitor. None of them was even prosecuted for anything
resembling a crime, because none of them had ever committed one. And yet
because of Kazan's testimony before the House Committee their careers,
and their lives, were destroyed.
Ron
Dale and Mysti Berry <myst...@comcast.net> wrote:
> Now apart from the question of whether any of those Kazan named --
> film and theatre writers, actors, and directors -- were in any sense a
> threat to the United States, there is for me the much larger moral
> question of whether Kazan, or anyone, should do what he did, and then
> pay no price for having done it.
>
> So why is this important now? Because Kazan to this day has never even
> acknowledged that what he did was immoral, or had consequences, or even
> that the eight he named were not in fact threats to the security of this
> country. He destroyed the careers of eight men and their families who,
> let's remember, had never so much as committed a crime in their lives.
There are a couple of things worth pointing out.
Kazan claims (and I'm not interested arguing the veracity of this, but
it's his claim) that the committee already had the names of everybody he
mentioned.
He also was given the choice of either naming names or never working in
Hollywood again. He had a rather strong falling out with the Communist
party, which wasn't entirely pleasant, so as he claims to have seen it,
his choices were these:
1) stick to his guns (he originally refused to testify), end his career,
and not stop HUAC.
2) name names they already had, keep your career, do minimal harm.
Now, people will argue back and forth about whether the names mentioned
by Kazan were known to the comittee or not. Again, debate amongst
yourselves, feel free, I wasn't there. People who were there say
conflicting things. Kazan writes that he felt his agreement was mostly
symbolic -- he did his rituale obseisance (my words) to HUAC, and they'd
leave him alone.
Obviously, some would have preferred if he had stood up to them, as a
high-profile, well-respected person, and an established anti-communist
to boot. But how many of us would end our own careers for a political
cause we didn't agree with? Much less if we honestly believed we weren't
naming anyone new?
Again, I don't claim to know the truth. I will not get involved in flame
wars on this. I'm just reporting what I've read -- and lots of people
seem to remember contradictary things about how much damage Kazan was
responsible for.
Furthermore, Kazan wasn't accusing anyone of a crime. He named the names
of people who actually were communists, who actually had, at some point,
hoped to see the revolution come to the US. Now, people who be able to
do that and keep their careers, but what Kazan said, "I knew these
people and they were communists" isn't exactly shocking or a horrible
thing to say. The problem is the use to which that information was put.
-Ron
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen)
<myst...@comcast.net> wrote:
> Now apart from the question of whether any of those Kazan named --
>film and theatre writers, actors, and directors -- were in any sense a
>threat to the United States, there is for me the much larger moral
>question of whether Kazan, or anyone, should do what he did, and then
>pay no price for having done it.
>
> So why is this important now? Because Kazan to this day has never even
>acknowledged that what he did was immoral, or had consequences, or even
>that the eight he named were not in fact threats to the security of this
>country. He destroyed the careers of eight men and their families who,
>let's remember, had never so much as committed a crime in their lives.
>They, along with many many others, including Kazen, had joined the
>Communist Party in the 1930s, during the depression, when it seemed that
>the capitalist vision was destroying America and all it stood for. None
>of them was ever a spy, nor an espionage agent, nor certainly in any
>sense a traitor. None of them was even prosecuted for anything
>resembling a crime, because none of them had ever committed one. And yet
>because of Kazan's testimony before the House Committee their careers,
>and their lives, were destroyed.
Well, Mysti, once again you are grossly misinformed. This might help
a little:
http://www.moderntimes.com/palace/kazan/
Elia KAzan was given the honorary Oscar for his contribution to
American film. He is still one of the most important, if not the
singularly most important driving forces in 20th century American
movies. I hope you (and those reading this) will take the time to
read the bio-sketch of the man at the above URL
Howeever, the thing that pissed me off most, and I do mean pissed!, is
that I don't see or hear or read anyone saying, "Hey, look at what OUR
COUNTRY did to OUR CITIZENS to create panic, fear, and disharmony, and
now it's time to pull closer together with love and understanding."
If anyone thinks Nazi Germany did horrible things by getting young
kids to spy on their parents, friends, and neighors, and report any
"wrong doings" they commited is bad, it's exactly the kind of thing
our own government did to our own citizens during the post WWII
anti-communist era. And then there's that little "mistake" that our
country made during WWII of locking up every Japanese American citizen
they could get their hands on, confiscating their real estate, homes,
and all the posessions they couldn't carry of to the interment camps
in one suitcase. And look what our beloved government is doing now
with the "Patriot Act."
Elia Kazan was in immigrant. Elia Kazan LOVED his work. Elia Kazan
was making BIG BUCKS for 20th Century Fox. And Spyros Skouras, then
president of Fox, pressured Kazan to go before the HUAC if he liked
working there. Kazan discussed his predicament with his close friend
Arthur Miller, and Miller swore to Kazan that he was fully sumpathetic
to his (Kazan's) position, and that whatever Kazan decided, he would
always be his friend. Kazan did some checking on whether anyone who
was in the 1920s "cammunist" theater group was unknown to the HUAC.
It appeared they were not. Kazan testified in order to stay in this
country and keep his job. In return, Darryl Zanuch (20th Century Fox)
called him in and said Fox didn't have enough money to pay Kazan for
the last pitcuter in his Fox contract! Henry Miller pubically turned
his back on Kazan. And the HUSC went on, full steam ahead, until
Senator Joseph McCarthy ran into one Edward R. Murrow, who proved to
be the "truth syrum" America so desperately needed.
And Brando was so incensed he said he wasn't going to work with Kazan
ever again! Well... Except maybe for "On The Waterfront." That
movie took EIGHT Oscars, including Best Director for Kazan, Best Actor
for Brando, and four additional nominations that didn't win.
Who are some of the Hollywood greats and near-greats who worked with
Kazan AFTER his HUAC testimony? Well, let's see. There's Brando, of
course. Then there's Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Kirk Douglas, Warren
Beatty, Anthony Quinn, Deborah Kerr, Tony Curtis, James Woods, James
Dean, Eli Wallach, Faye Dunaway, Robert DeNiro, Walter Matthau, Lee
Remick, Robert Mitchum, Montgomery Clift, Natalie Wood, Jack
Nicholson, Jeanne Moreau... The list goes on and on. Kazan made
careers and polished the reputations of established actors for TWENTY
FOUR YEARS *AFTER* his appearance before the HUAC!
The interesting thing about history is that it is rarely about things
as they really happened. It is about things the way people (as in
writers and politicians and victors) wish they had really happened.
If you don't believe me, just think back to last week and all of the
praise for Ronald Reagan's bringing down the Soviet Union. Even
Gorbachev likes the myth enough to attend the funeral. But the truth
is that Chernobyl, and the financial, human, and political aftermath
of the world's largest nuclear power plant disaster is what brought
that house down. Strange how "history" can mangle the truth when it
suits enough people.
Mysti, if you've read this far, I can't fault you for believing all
the misinformation. But take a look at the facts for yourself. There
are still a lot of them around. And be at least a little angry at our
government for creating and allowing, indeed promoting, an environment
of fear throughout the country.
Now there's a lesson for "today."
Caroline
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen)
wrote:
>Furthermore, Kazan wasn't accusing anyone of a crime. He named the names
>of people who actually were communists, who actually had, at some point,
>hoped to see the revolution come to the US. Now, people who be able to
>do that and keep their careers, but what Kazan said, "I knew these
>people and they were communists" isn't exactly shocking or a horrible
>thing to say. The problem is the use to which that information was put.
Basically what you say is true, Ron, but not exactly... It lacks
context. Kazan had joined New York city's "Group Theater" in 1934 at
the height of The Great Depression. Exactly how politically hard-line
communist the group was I don't know, but I do know that in those
years of National Poverty, so to speak, there were a lot of Americans
who leaned toward any philosophy or political system that promised an
end to bread lines, soup kitchens, a roof over your family's heads,
and no more, "Brother, can you spare a dime?"
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been President of the United States for
two years by then, and many of his programs (that eventually worked
very well and pulled this country up by its boot straps) seemed very
close to communism. Indeed, there were (and still are) a *LOT* of
moguls in this country who were screaming that it was! FDR created
public works programs that gave employment to ditch diggers,
engineers, artists, writers, factory workers, secretaries, and
millions more. So communism in 1934 didn't carry the bad connotations
in light of the times. FDR's programs hadn't yet turned things around
completely, but they were a start, and promised hope because the
government of the people was going to do something concrete for the
people. And that's pretty much "it" in a nutshell when it comes to
what the communist party in this country *appeared* to be offering.
But idealism is a funny thing. What looks great on paper doesn't
always work well in reality. Kazan became disillusioned with
communism and said so. As you say, the problem is how the information
was used...
Caroline
failedScreenwriter
tragic time and seen the parallels to today's fearmongering as well as
you just did in that post.
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen)
You're welcome, fs. But wouldn't it be great if there were no
parallels in today's world?
Caroline
Mysti Berry
> On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 18:06:10 -0700, Dale and Mysti Berry
> <myst...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > Now apart from the question of whether any of those Kazan named --
> >film and theatre writers, actors, and directors -- were in any sense a
> >threat to the United States, there is for me the much larger moral
> >question of whether Kazan, or anyone, should do what he did, and then
> >pay no price for having done it.
> >
> > So why is this important now? Because Kazan to this day has never even
> >acknowledged that what he did was immoral, or had consequences, or even
> >that the eight he named were not in fact threats to the security of this
> >country. He destroyed the careers of eight men and their families who,
> >let's remember, had never so much as committed a crime in their lives.
> >They, along with many many others, including Kazen, had joined the
> >Communist Party in the 1930s, during the depression, when it seemed that
> >the capitalist vision was destroying America and all it stood for. None
> >of them was ever a spy, nor an espionage agent, nor certainly in any
> >sense a traitor. None of them was even prosecuted for anything
> >resembling a crime, because none of them had ever committed one. And yet
> >because of Kazan's testimony before the House Committee their careers,
> >and their lives, were destroyed.
>
>
> Well, Mysti, once again you are grossly misinformed. This might help
> a little:
>
> http://www.moderntimes.com/palace/kazan/
Once again? How...compassionate of you. The site you quote proves my
point, that Kazan was unrepentent, this quote from the site above:
""To defend a secrecy I don't think right and to defend people who
have already been named or soon would be by someone else. . . I hate
the Communists and have for many years and don't feel right about
giving up my career to defend them. I will give up my film career if
it is in the interests of defending something I believe in, but not
this".
and also from your site:
He declared several years later, "within two years I had no regrets".
how exactly am I misinformed?
He seems to be completely unaware of the bigger issues, something that
astonishes me to this day.
>
> Howeever, the thing that pissed me off most, and I do mean pissed!, is
> that I don't see or hear or read anyone saying, "Hey, look at what OUR
> COUNTRY did to OUR CITIZENS to create panic, fear, and disharmony, and
> now it's time to pull closer together with love and understanding."
You can listen to www.airamericaradio.com on the internet every day
and hear this.
You can attend John Kerry (or almost any non-Republican) campaign
meeting and hear this.
You may not hear it much in Texas, but trust me, outrage at the fear
and hate mongering (which hasn't improved since the release of Bowling
for Columbine, where M.Moore put a name to it for once) is in the air
in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and even in places like
Bakersfield. We put it out there as screenwriters and just every day
in coffee bars etc. And we are hearing a lot less "that's unAmerican"
lately.
> If anyone thinks Nazi Germany did horrible things by getting young
> kids to spy on their parents, friends, and neighors, and report any
> "wrong doings" they commited is bad, it's exactly the kind of thing
> our own government did to our own citizens during the post WWII
> anti-communist era.
And during the Reagan era. Remember those kids ratting out their poor
exhausted stoner parents?
> And then there's that little "mistake" that our
> country made during WWII of locking up every Japanese American citizen
> they could get their hands on, confiscating their real estate, homes,
"> and all the posessions they couldn't carry of to the interment
camps
> in one suitcase. And look what our beloved government is doing now
> with the "Patriot Act."
We're all very aware of it, at least out here on the left coast. I
contributed to a political campaign for the first time in my life. I
don't stay silent at family gatherings and watercooler chats. What
other things do you suggest we do, Caroline, aside from the obvious,
write screenplays.
>
> Elia Kazan was in immigrant. Elia Kazan LOVED his work. Elia Kazan
> was making BIG BUCKS for 20th Century Fox. And Spyros Skouras, then
> president of Fox, pressured Kazan to go before the HUAC if he liked
> working there. Kazan discussed his predicament with his close friend
> Arthur Miller, and Miller swore to Kazan that he was fully sumpathetic
> to his (Kazan's) position, and that whatever Kazan decided, he would
> always be his friend.
You're just paraphrasing the website, Caroline. The website doesn't
discuss Kazan's responsibilityy to look at his actions in context,
something you just demanded American citizens do above...hmmmmm....
> Kazan did some checking on whether anyone who
> was in the 1920s "cammunist" theater group was unknown to the HUAC.
> It appeared they were not.
That's not the point. The point is that he willingly participated in a
charadge that destroyed lives. Who cares what Kazan thought off
communism or nudism or anything else? The committee was making illegal
demands. Kazan may not have had any good choices, but his refusal to
acknowledge the larger context makes him as big a criminal as Reagan.
But thank god, a much better director :)
> Kazan testified in order to stay in this
> country and keep his job. In return, Darryl Zanuch (20th Century Fox)
> called him in and said Fox didn't have enough money to pay Kazan for
> the last pitcuter in his Fox contract! Henry Miller pubically turned
> his back on Kazan. And the HUSC went on, full steam ahead, until
> Senator Joseph McCarthy ran into one Edward R. Murrow, who proved to
> be the "truth syrum" America so desperately needed.
A truth syrum that would have happened sooner had more men in Kazan's
position done what Murrow evenutally did.
> Who are some of the Hollywood greats and near-greats who worked with
> Kazan AFTER his HUAC testimony? Well, let's see. There's Brando, of
> course. Then there's Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Kirk Douglas, Warren
> Beatty, Anthony Quinn, Deborah Kerr, Tony Curtis, James Woods, James
> Dean, Eli Wallach, Faye Dunaway, Robert DeNiro, Walter Matthau, Lee
> Remick, Robert Mitchum, Montgomery Clift, Natalie Wood, Jack
> Nicholson, Jeanne Moreau... The list goes on and on. Kazan made
> careers and polished the reputations of established actors for TWENTY
> FOUR YEARS *AFTER* his appearance before the HUAC!
What's your point? He certainly didn't work with any of the men whose
lives he helped ruin, they weren't working...
> If you don't believe me, just think back to last week and all of the
> praise for Ronald Reagan's bringing down the Soviet Union. Even
> Gorbachev likes the myth enough to attend the funeral. But the truth
> is that Chernobyl, and the financial, human, and political aftermath
> of the world's largest nuclear power plant disaster is what brought
> that house down. Strange how "history" can mangle the truth when it
> suits enough people.
No kidding. But aren't you doing exactly that by ignoring the context
of Kazan's behavior, just as Kazan did?
>
> Mysti, if you've read this far, I can't fault you for believing all
> the misinformation.
WHAT MISINFORMATION? He testified, he never recanted, and lives were
destroyed.
> But take a look at the facts for yourself. There
> are still a lot of them around. And be at least a little angry at our
> government for creating and allowing, indeed promoting, an environment
> of fear throughout the country.
Will you please stop making assumption about what I think? Your
batting average is zero.
>
> Now there's a lesson for "today."
Speaking of preaching to the choir :)
Mysti
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen)
wrote:
Yikes! The Myst talking about compassion when she takes such an
UNcompassionate stand on Kazan?
>The site you quote proves my
>point, that Kazan was unrepentent, this quote from the site above:
Unrepentant in what sense? Jeez, here's a guy who half the world shat
upon, and you want cries of "Mea culpa" from him?
Just how familiar are you with this part of history? This "Group
Theater" that was such a "threat" to the American Way, according to
Joseph McCarthy, was intrincically linked with the Soviet Union's
version of the art of theater, and so is The Actor's Studio if you
want to check out history.
When Konstantin Stanislavski (yes, *THAT* Stanislavski!) brought his
Moscow Theater troup to America, two of his best defected; Maria
Ouspenskaya and Richard Boleslavski. Ouspenskaya is best remembered
for her role as the old Gypsy woman in the Lon Chaney as Wolfman
movies. But before that, the two of them founded The American
Laboratory Theater, teaching the "Stanislavski Method" of acting,
which is where the term "method actor" draws its roots.
Lee Strasburg was a student of Boleslavski, and felt strongly that
there should be a full fledged theatrical group to teach and train
actors. So Lee Strasburg and Cheryl Crawford founded the "Group
Theater," which was an important undertaking in the development of
American Theater as we know it today. Kazan joined the Group Theater
in 1932 and became its lead actor. "Group Theater" was a publically
known entity that exhisted until 1942, when it dissolved for... Well,
everybody had a different version of why. But the trail of intrinsic
politics that ran from Stanislavski to Ospenskaya/Boleslavski to
Strasburg et al., got to Kazan. For whatever reason, it scared the
bejeezus out of him and he didn't want any part of it.
But was it "communism" in the political sense that can be a national
threat? When you look at acting with an analytical eye, it is just a
bunch of grown-ups playing "Let's pretend." Kids do it instinctively.
But as adults, there is an excitement that comes with ensemble work
that involves "wearing" your character in front of peers. It is an
exciting, infectious thing. And in Russia, a revolution in acting
came along with the revolution of politics. Moscow was afire!
Eisenstein, Stanslavski, and lots more. And there was a rather lavish
budget, thanks to Stalin, for such work... As long as it glorified
Communism. Eisenstein payed his dues freely. Ospenskaya and
Boleslavski balked and bolted. But the fervor was there, and like a
torch, it was handed from Stanislavski's touring Moscow Theater, to
the American Laboratory Theater, to the Group Theater, to The Actor's
Studio. And Kazan brought the flame to Hollywood. Who are the
criminals?
Kazan was a Turk. Born in Istanbul when it was still called
Constantinople under the last of the sultans, and that regime put the
fear of God (or Allah) in anyone who lived there! Kazan was an
immigrant, and deportation back to Turkey was the last thing on God's
green earth he wanted to have happen. But those threats were not to
come until later. As a member of Group Theater, he just got fed up
with the party line...
And left. In or around 1934.
And in 1947 -- two years after WWII ended -- he founded ACTORS STUDIO
with Cheryl Crawford and Robert Lewis. Strasburg was friends with all
three, and two years later was invited to become a member and began
teaching. The rest is history.
Now, the POINT of this long historical background is to try to show
you that GROUP THEATER was a matter of public record! Kazan was
pressured by 20th Century Fox and the HUAC to name the people who were
active in Group Theater. It was like reading a copy of the phone book
into the public record. Kazan DID NOT "ruin lives by betraying
people." Anyone who knew anything about Broadway theater knew about
who the members of Group Theater were. And if someone had questions,
there were all the public records. How many members of Group Theater
were card carrying communists? I don't know. But it was Group
Theater that the HUAC was claiming was a "communist front
organization" and wanted names from.
Kazan was a patsy. The fall guy. He was the ONLY member/former
member of Group Theater who was nailed to the cross that I know of.
Strasburg came out smelling like a rose.
Mysti, I'm not going to go through the rest of your arguments point by
point. I don't think it's useful. And I'm not sure that anyone who
didn't live through those times can understand the national hysteria
of those times. I was a child during WWII and teenager during the
communist hysteria. All during WWII, Americans were heavily
propagandized with the Soviet Union as ally. And the day after the
war ended, they were "the enemy." Within two weeks of the end of
WWII, a dear family friend who was a Soviet rocket scientist working
on a top secret project with U.S. rocket scientists was whisked from
my young life, and no one would answer me honestly about where or why
Olga had gone, except that she was "a communist." Well, she was a
communist when she came to this country, so explain that to me!
The late 1940s and the early 50s were a nightmare. There is something
strange, off-putting, and disgusting about the human race. Put us in
situations of of great power, and very few of us behave well. Under
the McCarthy frenzy, if you wanted to ruin someone, all you had to do
was start a rumor that they were a communist or a communist
sympathizer and they were dead meat. Fact or fiction, it was an
indellible stain that nothing could remove.
Now, exactly what is it that you wish Kazan had owned up to? That he
was manipulated by the studio he worked for, betrayed by friends, and
made the sacrificial lamb long after his HUAC appearance for reading
the phone book to the McCarthy committee?
You can sit in all the judgement chairs you want, and throw all the
rocks you think you are righteously entitled to throw, but as for me,
I lived in those times. They were pretty damned shitty, and while I
haven't walked in Kazan's shoes, I've come too close for comfort.
Caroline
geoff alexander
Kazan was a coward. He failed to challenge HUAC, failed to question,
failed to stand up. That's not the worst thing a human being can do.
Later on, it seemed that he tried to justify this by claiming that he
believed these people were a real threat to this country. Of course,
they weren't, and everyone knows it, but that's what he had to do to
live with himself. Again, totally understandable. My wife's family
was pretty much destroyed by HUAC, hounded by the FBI, driven out of
their home town, and you know what, her grandfather, a labor organizer
and son of a Texas dirt farmer never backed down. If more people like
Kazan had taken a stand like my wife's grandfather did, HUAC might
have been blunted earlier on.
G
Steven J. Weller
geoffale...@hotmail.com (geoff alexander) wrote:
> Kazan was a coward. He failed to challenge HUAC, failed to question,
> failed to stand up. That's not the worst thing a human being can do.
> Later on, it seemed that he tried to justify this by claiming that he
> believed these people were a real threat to this country. Of course,
> they weren't, and everyone knows it, but that's what he had to do to
> live with himself. Again, totally understandable. My wife's family
> was pretty much destroyed by HUAC, hounded by the FBI, driven out of
> their home town, and you know what, her grandfather, a labor organizer
> and son of a Texas dirt farmer never backed down. If more people like
> Kazan had taken a stand like my wife's grandfather did, HUAC might
> have been blunted earlier on.
Gotta disagree on this one. Kazan had been a member, and then
repudiated the CP long before HUAC was so much as a gleam in anyone's
eye. I've never seen anything to suggest that he didn't believe that
Communism was a threat to the American way of life - a way of life he
cherished as only an immigrant can.
And, as an immigrant, he was in a postion where he could have been
deported with the stroke of a pen. That meant that he really only had
two choices - cooperate and give the Committee that kind of victory, or
refuse, be deported, and give the committee a different kind of victory.
How much more damage could the Committee have done if they had Kazan as
an example of what happens to people who don't cooperate? Is
professional suicide really expected, in defense of a cause you not only
don't support, but actively oppose?
Kazan's decision wasn't an easy one: I pray I never have to make one
like it, but am much less certain I won't now, than I was a few years
ago. He knew his options better than anyone here, and I still don't see
an outcome that would have been better for anyone - ANYONE - had he
chosen not to sooperate. The Committee already had the names.
--
Life Continues, Despite
Evidence to the Contrary
Steven
Jacques E. Bouchard
news:az941-A9411A....@individual.net:
> Gotta disagree on this one. Kazan had been a member, and then
> repudiated the CP long before HUAC was so much as a gleam in anyone's
> eye. I've never seen anything to suggest that he didn't believe that
> Communism was a threat to the American way of life - a way of life he
> cherished as only an immigrant can.
>
> And, as an immigrant, he was in a postion where he could have been
> deported with the stroke of a pen. That meant that he really only had
> two choices - cooperate and give the Committee that kind of victory,
> or refuse, be deported, and give the committee a different kind of
> victory. How much more damage could the Committee have done if they
> had Kazan as an example of what happens to people who don't cooperate?
> Is professional suicide really expected, in defense of a cause you
> not only don't support, but actively oppose?
>
> Kazan's decision wasn't an easy one: I pray I never have to make one
> like it, but am much less certain I won't now, than I was a few years
> ago. He knew his options better than anyone here, and I still don't
> see an outcome that would have been better for anyone - ANYONE - had
> he chosen not to sooperate. The Committee already had the names.
That's a cop out. That's like throwing a stone in a stoning party
because, well, the victims are going to get stones anyway, so what's one
more?
jaybee
Steven J. Weller
No, it's like having someone hold a gun to your head and telling you to
throw a stone at someone who's already dead, or he'll kill you.
Do you throw the stone, or die for your anti-stoning principles?
Jacques E. Bouchard
The victims weren't "already dead" but for all the people who
testified against them thinking that if they didn't do it, the next guy
would anyway. The Committee knew exactly how to nudge them forward. It
was a circle jerk of witnesses, each blaming the guy next to him for the
sticky mess.
> Do you throw the stone, or die for your anti-stoning principles?
Well, if I throw the stone I don't spend the rest of my life trying
to justify my cowardice and minimizing my responsibility.
Don't 'mericans get all teary-eyed and swollen-chested over Patrick
Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death", and Voltaire's "I may not
agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say
it"? See, it's all talk until it meets the litmus test. And the HCUA was
such a test.
jaybee
Steven J. Weller
"Jacques E. Bouchard" <jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
> "Steven J. Weller" <az...@lafn.org> wrote in
> news:az941-4A3E16....@individual.net:
>
> > No, it's like having someone hold a gun to your head and telling you
> > to throw a stone at someone who's already dead, or he'll kill you.
>
> The victims weren't "already dead" but for all the people who
> testified against them thinking that if they didn't do it, the next guy
> would anyway. The Committee knew exactly how to nudge them forward. It
> was a circle jerk of witnesses, each blaming the guy next to him for the
> sticky mess.
The names were already a matter of public record. The Committee wanted
him to name names, but it was just for show - it wasn't about gathering
information.
> > Do you throw the stone, or die for your anti-stoning principles?
>
> Well, if I throw the stone I don't spend the rest of my life trying
> to justify my cowardice and minimizing my responsibility.
You're a bigger man than most, then. What Kazan was forced into doing
was pretty awful, and it's not a choice he made easily. The choice he
made, in the end, was about saving himself, so it's hardly surprising
that he'd want to justify it after the fact with the same sorts of
rationale that allowed him to make that choice in the first place.
> Don't 'mericans get all teary-eyed and swollen-chested over Patrick
> Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death", and Voltaire's "I may not
> agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say
> it"? See, it's all talk until it meets the litmus test. And the HCUA was
> such a test.
You'rr right, in the above observation and also in noting that the
Committee knew exactly how to budge people forward. Kazan was picked
for exactly the reasons he folded; he was in a position where no matter
which way he went, he would provide the Committee with a victory.
Cooperate and lend credibility o their efforts, or refuse, be deported,
and be the Committee's shining example of what happens to people who
don't cooperate. Could he have chosen o fall on his sword, go back to
Turkey, never come to Hollywood or New York again, give up his career,
etc? Sure. Did he have an obligation to do that? Different people
will have different opinions.
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen)
<az...@lafn.org> wrote:
>You're a bigger man than most, then. What Kazan was forced into doing
>was pretty awful, and it's not a choice he made easily. The choice he
>made, in the end, was about saving himself, so it's hardly surprising
>that he'd want to justify it after the fact with the same sorts of
>rationale that allowed him to make that choice in the first place.
You're right, Steven, but the thing that I find disturbing is that of
all of the people who damn Kazan today for what he did yesterday, I
don't hear them damning our government for allowing that kind of
hate-mongering, fear-nurturing atmosphere to come about in the first
place.
Richard Nixon was VERY active in the McCarthy hearings, working for
McCarthy. But the American people elected him president. And look at
what an upstanding, moral character he turned out to be. There's a
long list of people who helped McCarthy, including J. Edgar Hoover.
Hey, let's name a building after him!
There WAS a goup of Hollywood insiders who did lodge protests, rode a
train to Washington, D.C., did their best to make their voices heard.
Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward among them, though possibly not the
most notable at the time. I was alive then. I read the papers and
watched the news on TV and listened to the news on radio. But it was
long AFTER that I learned about their activism. I don't recall
hearing about it at the time. But it is possible I missed it. But I
am absolutely certain it didn't get equal coverage with the HUAC.
As I've already made clear, I have great compasion for Elia Kazan.
I'm going to abuse my share of bandwidth (again) and post his remarks
about what it means to be a director below. Even if you hate his
guts, do read it. It is the most eloquent discourse I have ever read
on what it means to be a director, and so very much of it applies to
screenwriters as well.
And then, Kazan aside, think about how complicity and/or laziness
allows the dark side of our government to get the upper hand. We're
in a pretty dark time right now. We still have most of the
Constitution in tact. And it works just like a muscle... Use it or
lose it.
Caroline
If you'd prefer to read Kazan's comments on the DGA website -- with
pictures, you can do it here:
http://dga.org/index2.php3?chg=
................................................................
ELIA KAZAN ON WHAT MAKES A DIRECTOR
...............................................................
In the autumn of 1973, Elia Kazan, director of such classic films as
Gentleman's Agreement, A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront,
was honored by a two week retrospective of his films at Wesleyan
University, Middletown, Connecticut. At the conclusion of the program,
Mr. Kazan gave this timeless talk to students.
.........................................................................................................
This is the traditional instant for me to thank all of you who have
helped mount this retrospective. I think you did a damned good job.
Together we may have finally begun to move this university, and, by
influence, those like it, towards a serious and devoted study of films
as the art of this day. I hope and-judging by the number of you here
present-have begun to believe that this retrospective and the
appearance of a distinguished French critic on your campus will be the
first in a series of similar events.
A reporter from your campus paper, the Argus, asked me why I'd given
my papers to this university. I gave a superficial answer. I said
Wesleyan is close to where I live, so my things would be available to
me after an hour's drive. I added that the authorities here had been
generous, eager and accommodating. All true.
But the real reason was that for years I've been thinking it was about
time our institutions of learning became involved in film as the
subject of formal courses of study both for themselves as pieces of
art and for what they say as witnesses to their day. I saw an
opportunity here to progress this cause.
Tonight I urge you who direct the program of this university to now
place the Movie on the same basis of regard, esteem and concern as-
for instance-the novel.
We simply can no longer think of movies in the way we used to years
ago, as a pastime between supper and bed. What your faculty has
particularly contributed here was to make these two weeks of study
with Michel Ciment part of the curriculum. Credit towards graduation
was given, a first step in the right direction.
I have been examining the excellent book you have assembled with this
showing of my work-I was going to say life's work, but that would not
be totally accurate. It should be noted that at the Yale Drama School
and elsewhere I had a valuable time as a backstage technician. I was a
stage carpenter and I lit shows. Then there was a tedious time as a
radio actor, playing hoodlums for bread. I had a particularly
educational four years as a stage manager helping and watching
directors and learning a great deal. And, in between, I had a lively
career as a stage actor in some good plays. All these activities were
very valuable to me.
In time, I was fortunate enough to have directed the works of the best
dramatists of a couple of the decades which have now become history. I
was privileged to serve Williams, Miller, Bill Inge, Archie MacLeish,
Sam Behrman and Bob Anderson and put some of their plays on the stage.
I thought of my role with these men as that of a craftsman who tried
to realize as well as he could the author's intentions in the author's
vocabulary and within his range, style and purpose.
I have not thought of my film work that way.
Some of you may have heard of the auteur theory. That concept is
partly a critic's plaything. Something for them to spat over and use
to fill a column. But it has its point, and that point is simply that
the director is the true author of the film. The director TELLS the
film, using a vocabulary the lesser part of which is an arrangement of
words.
A screenplay's worth has to be measured less by its language than by
its architecture and how that dramatizes the theme. A screenplay, we
directors soon enough learn, is not a piece of writing as much as it
is a construction. We learn to feel for the skeleton under the skin of
words.
Meyerhold, the great Russian stage director, said that words were the
decoration on the skirts of action. He was talking about Theatre, but
I've always thought his observations applied more aptly to film.
It occurred to me when I was considering what to say here that since
you all don't see directors-it's unique for Wesleyan to have a
filmmaker standing where I am after a showing of work, while you have
novelists, historians, poets and writers of various kinds of studies
living among you-that it might be fun if I were to try to list for you
and for my own sport what a film director needs to know as what
personal characteristics and attributes he might advantageously
possess.
How must he educate himself?
Of what skills is his craft made?
Of course, I'm talking about a book-length subject. Stay easy, I'm not
going to read a book to you tonight. I will merely try to list the
fields of knowledge necessary to him, and later those personal
qualities he might happily possess, give them to you as one might give
chapter headings, section leads, first sentences of paragraphs,
without elaboration.
Here we go.
Literature. Of course. All periods, all languages, all forms.
Naturally a film director is better equipped.if he's well read. Jack
Ford, who introduced himself with the words, "I make Westerns," was an
extremely well and widely read man.
The Literature of the Theatre. For one thing, so the film director
will appreciate the difference from film. He should also study the
classic theatre literature for construction, for exposition of theme,
for the means of characterization, for dramatic poetry, for the
elements of unity, especially that unity created by pointing to climax
and then for climax as the essential and final embodiment of the
theme.
The Craft of Screen Dramaturgy. Every director, even in those rare
instances when he doesn't work with a writer or two--Fellini works
with a squadron-must take responsibility for the screenplay. He has
not only to guide rewriting but to eliminate what's unnecessary, cover
faults, appreciate nonverbal possibilities, ensure correct structure,
have a sense of screen time, how much will elapse, in what places, for
what purposes. Robert Frost's Tell Everything a Little Faster applies
to all expositional parts. In the climaxes, time is unrealistically
extended, "stretched," usually by close-ups.
The film director knows that beneath the surface of his screenplay
there is a subtext, a calendar of intentions and feelings and inner
events. What appears to be happening, he soon learns, is rarely what
is happening. This subtext is one of the film director's most valuable
tools. It is what he directs. You will rarely see a veteran director
holding a script as he works-or even looking at it. Beginners, yes.
Most directors' goal today is to write their own scripts. But that is
our oldest tradition. Chaplin would hear that Griffith Park had been
flooded by a heavy rainfall. Packing his crew, his stand-by actors and
his equipment in a few cars, he would rush there, making up the story
of the two reel comedy en route, the details on the spot.
The director of films should know comedy as well as drama. Jack Ford
used to call most parts "comics." He meant, I suppose, a way of
looking at people without false sentiment, through an objectivity that
deflated false heroics and undercut self-favoring and finally revealed
a saving humor in the most tense moments. The Human Comedy, another
Frenchman called it. The fact that Billy Wilder is always amusing
doesn't make his films less serious.
Quite simply, the screen director must know either by training or by
instinct how to feed ajoke and how to score with it, how to anticipate
and protect laughs. He might well study Chaplin and the other great
two reel comedy-makers for what are called sight gags, non-verbal
laughs, amusement derived from "business," stunts and moves, and
simply from funny faces and odd bodies. This vulgar foundation-the
banana peel and the custard pie-are basic to our craft and part of its
health. Wyler and Stevens began by making two reel comedies, and I
seem to remember Capra did, too.
American film directors would do well to know our vaudeville
traditions. Just as Fellini adored the clowns, music hall performers,
and the circuses of his country and paid them homage again and again
in his work, our filmmaker would do well to study magic. I believe
some of the wonderful cuts in Citizen Kane came from the fact that
Welles was a practicing magician and so understood the drama of sudden
unexpected appearances and the startling change. Think, too, of
Bergman, how often he uses magicians and sleight of hand.
The director should know opera, its effects and its absurdities, a
subject in which Bernardo Bertolucci is schooled. He should know the
American musical stage and its tradition, but even more important, the
great American musical films. He must not look down on these; we love
them for very good reasons.
Our man should know acrobatics, the art of juggling and tumbling, the
techniques of the wry comic song. The techniques of the Commedia
dell'arte are used, it seems to me, in a film called 0 Lucky Man!
Lindsay Anderson's master, Bertolt Brecht, adored the Berlin satirical
cabaret of his time and adapted their techniques.
Let's move faster because it's endless.
Painting and Sculpture; their history, their revolutions and counter
revolutions. The painters of the Italian Renaissance used their
mistresses as models for the Madonna, so who can blame a film director
for using his girlfriend in a leading role-unless she does a bad job.
Many painters have worked in the Theatre. Bakst, Picasso, Aronson and
Matisse come to mind. More will. Here, we are still with Disney.
Which brings us to Dance. In my opinion, it's a considerable asset if
the director's knowledge here is not only theoretical but practical
ana personal. Dance is an essential part of a screen director's
education. It's a great advantage for him if he can "move." It will
help him not only to move actors but move the camera. The film
director, ideally, should be as able as a choreographer, quite
literally so.I don't mean the tango in Bertolucci's Last or the High
School gym dance in American Graffiti as much as I do the baffle
scenes in D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation which are pure
choreography and very beautiful. Look at Ford's Cavalry charges that
way. Or Jim Cagney's dance of death on the long steps in The Roaring
Twenties.
The film director must know music, classic, so called-too much of an
umbrella word, that! Let us say of all periods. And as with sculpture
and painting, he must know what social situations and currents the
music came out of.
Of course he must be particularly INTO the music of his own day-acid
rock; latin rock; blues and jazz; pop; tin pan alley; barbershop;
corn; country; Chicago; New Orleans; Nashville.
The film director should know the history of stage scenery, its
development from background to environment and so to the settings
INSIDE WHICH films are played out. Notice I stress INSIDE WHICH as
opposed to IN FRONT OF. The construction of scenery for filmmaking was
traditionally the work of architects. The film director must study
from life, from newspaper clippings and from his own photographs,
dramatic environments and particularly how they affect behavior.
I recommend to every young director that he start his own collection
of clippings and photographs and, if he's able, his own sketches.
The film director must know costuming, its history through all
periods, its techniques and what it can be as expression. Again, life
is a prime source. We learn to study, as we enter each place, each
room, how the people there have chosen to present themselves. "How he
comes on," we say.
Costuming in films is so expressive a means that it is inevitably the
basic choice of the director. Visconti is brilliant here. So is
Bergman in a more modest vein. The best way to study this again is to
notice how people dress as an expression of what they wish to gain
from any occasion, what their intention is. Study your husband, study
your wife, how their attire is an expression of each day's mood and
hope, their good days, their days of low confidence, their time of
stress and how it shows in clothing.
Lighting. Of course. The various natural effects, the cross light of
morning, the heavy flat top light of midday-avoid it except for an
effect-the magic hour, so called by cameramen, dusk. How do they
affect mood? Obvious. We know it in life. How do they affect behavior?
Study that. Five o'clock is a low time, let's have a drink! Directors
choose the time of day for certain scenes with these expressive values
in mind. The master here is Jack Ford who used to plan his shots
within a sequence to best use certain natural effects that he could
not create but could very advantageously wait for.
Colors? Their psychological effect. So obvious I will not expand.
Favorite colors. Faded colors. The living grays. In Baby Doll you saw
a master cameraman-Boris Kaufman- making great use of white on white,
to help describe the washed out Southern whites.
And, of course, there are the instruments which catch all and should
dramatize all; the tools the director speaks through, the CAMERA and
the TAPE RECORDER. The film director obviously must know the Camera
and its lenses, which lens creates which effect, which one lies, which
one tells the cruel truth. Which filters bring out the clouds. The
director must know the various speeds at which the camera can roll and
especially the effects of small variations in speed. He must also know
the various camera mountings, the cranes and the dollies and the
possible moves he can make, the configurations in space through which
he can pass this instrument. He must know the zoom well enough so he
won't use itor almost never.
He should be intimately acquainted with the tape recorder. Andy Warhol
carries one everywhere he goes. Practice "bugging" yourself and your
friends. Notice how often speech overlaps.
The film director must understand the weather, how it's made and
where, how it moves, its warning signs, its crises, the kind of clouds
and what they mean. Remember the clouds in Shane. He must know weather
as dramatic expression, be on the alert to capitalize on changes in
weather as one of his means. He must study how heat and cold, rain and
snow, a soft breeze, a driving wind affect people and whether it's
true that there are more expressions of group rage during a long hot
summer and why.
The film director should know the City, ancient and modern, but
particularly his city, the one he loves like DeSica loves Naples,
Fellini-Rimini, Bergman-his island, Ray Calcutta, Renoir-the French
countryside, Clair-the city of Paris. His city, its features, its
operation, its substructure, its scenes behind the scenes, its
functionaries, its police, firefighters, garbage collectors, post
office workers, commuters and what they ride, its cathedrals and its
whore houses.
The film directors must know the country-no, that's too general a
term. He must know the mountains and the plains, the deserts of our
great Southwest, the heavy oily-bottom-soil of the Delta, the hills of
New England. He must know the water off Marblehead and Old Orchard
Beach, too cold for lingering and the water off the Florida Keys which
invites dawdling. Again, these are means of expression that he has and
among them he must make his choices. He must know how a breeze from a
fan can animate a dead-looking set by stirring a curtain.
He must know the sea, first-hand, chance a ship wreck so he'll
appreciate its power. He must know under the surface of the sea; it
may occur to him, if he does to play a scene there. He must have
crossed our rivers and know the strength of their currents. He must
have swum in our lakes and caught fish in our streams. You think I'm
exaggerating. Why did old man Flaherty and his Mrs. spend at least a
year in an environment before they exposed a foot of negative? While
you're young, you aspiring directors, hitch-hike our country!
And topography, the various trees, flowers, ground cover, grasses. And
the subsurface, shale, sand, gravel, New England ledge, six feet of
old river bottom? What kind of man works each and how does it affect
him?
Animals, too. How they resemble human beings. How to direct a chicken
to enter a room on cue. I had that problem once and I'm ashamed to
tell you how I did it. What a cat might mean to a love scene. The
symbolism of horses. The family life of the lion, how tender! The
patience of a cow.
Of course, the film director should know acting, its history and its
techniques. The more he knows about acting, the more at ease he will
be with actors. At one period of his growth, he should force himself
on stage or before the camera so he knows this experientially, too.
Some directors, and very famous ones, still fear actors instead of
embracing them as comrades in a task. But, by contrast, there is the
great Jean Renoir, see him in Rules of the Game. And his follower and
lover, Truffaut in The Wild Child, now in Day for Night.
The director must know how to stimulate, even inspire the actor.
Needless to say, he must also know how to make an actor seem NOT to
act. How to put him or her at their ease, bring them to that state of
relaxation where their creative faculties are released.
The film director must understand the instrument known as the VOICE.
He must also know SPEECH. And that they are not the same, as different
as resonance and phrasing. He should also know the various regional
accents of his country and what they tell about character.
All in all he must know enough in all these areas so his actors trust
him completely. This is often achieved by giving the impression that
any task he asks ofthem, he can perform, perhaps even better than they
can. This may not be true, but it's not a bad impression to create.
The film director, of course, must be up on the psychology of
behavior, "normal" and abnormal. He must know that they are linked,
that one is often the extension or intensification of the other and
that under certain stresses which the director will create within a
scene as it's acted out, one kind of behavior can be seen becoming the
other. And that is drama.
The film director must be prepared by knowledge and training to handle
neurotics. Why? Because most actors are. Perhaps all. What makes it
doubly interesting is that the film director often is. Stanley Kubrick
won't get on a plane-well, maybe that isn't so neurotic. But we are
all delicately balanced-isn't that a nice way to put it? Answer this:
how many interesting people have you met who are not-a little?
Of course we work with the psychology of the audience. We know it
differs from that of its individual members. In cutting films great
comedy directors like Hawks and Preston Sturges allow for the group
reactions they expect from the audience, they play on these. Hitchcock
has made this his art.
The film director must be learned in the erotic arts. The best way
here is through personal experience. But there is a history here, an
artistic technique. Pornography is not looked down upon. The film
director will admit to a natural interest in how other people do it.
Boredom, cruelty, banality are the only sins. Our man, for instance,
might study the Chinese erotic prints and those scenes on Greek vases
of the Golden Age which museum curators hide.
Of course, the film director must be an authority, even an expert on
the various attitudes of lovemaking, the postures and intertwining of
the parts of the body, the expressive parts and those generally
considered less expressive. He may well have, like Bunuel with feet,
special fetishes. He is not concerned to hide these, rather he will
probably express his inclinations with relish.
The director, here, may come to believe that suggestion is more erotic
than show. Then study how to go about it.
Then there is war. Its weapons, its techniques, its machinery, its
tactics, its history-oh my-Where is the time to learn all this?
Do not think, as you were brought up to think, that education starts
at six and stops at twenty-one, that we learn only from teachers,
books and classes. For us that is the least of it. The life of a film
director is a totality and he learns as he lives. Everything is
pertinent, there is nothing irrelevant or trivial. 0 Lucky Man, to
have such a profession! Every experience leaves its residue of
knowledge behind. Every book we read applies to us. Everything we see
and hear, if we like it, we steal it. Nothing is irrelevant. It all
belongs to us.
So history becomes a living subject, full of dramatic characters, not
a bore about treaties and battles. Religion is fascinating as a kind
of poetry expressing fear and loneliness and hope. The film director
reads The Golden Bough because sympathetic magic and superstition
interest him, these beliefs of the ancients and the savages parallel
those of his own time's people. He studies ritual because ritual as a
source of stage and screen mise-en-scene is an increasingly important
source.
Economics a bore? Not to us. Consider the demoralization of people in
a labor pool, the panic in currency, the reliance of a nation on
imports and the leverage this gives the country supplying the needed
imports. All these affect or can affect the characters and milieus
with which our film is concerned. Consider the facts behind the drama
of On the Waterfront. Wonder how we could have shown more of them.
The film director doesn't just eat. He studies food. He knows the
meals of all nations and how they're served, how consumed, what the
variations of taste are, the effect of the food, food as a soporific,
food as an aphrodisiac, as a means of expression of character.
Remember the scene in Tom Jones? La Grande Bouffe?
And, of course, the film director tries to keep up with the flow of
life around him, the contemporary issues, who's pressuring whom, who's
winning, who's losing, how pressure shows in the politician's body and
face and gestures. Inevitably, the director will be a visitor at night
court. And he will not duck jury duty. He studies advertising and goes
to "product meetings" and spies on those who make the ads that
influence people. He watches talk shows and marvels how Jackie Susann
peddles it. He keeps up on the moves, as near as he can read them, of
the secret underground societies. And skyjacking, what's the solution?
He talks to pilots. It's the perfect drama-that situation-no exit.
Travel. Yes. As much as he can. Let's not get into that.
Sports? The best directed shows on TV today are the professional
football games. Why? Study them. You are shown not only the game from
far and middle distance and close-up, you are shown the bench, the way
the two coaches sweat it out, the rejected sub, Craig Morton, waiting
for Staubach to be hurt and Woodall, does he really like Namath?
Johnson, Snead? Watch the spectators, too. Think how you might direct
certain scenes playing with a ball, or swimming or sailing-even though
that is nowhere indicated in the script. Or watch a ball game like
Hepburn and Tracy in George Steven's film, Woman of the Year!
I've undoubtedly left out a great number of things and what I've left
out is significant, no doubt, and describes some of my own
shortcomings.
Oh! Of course, I've left out the most important thing. The subject the
film director must know most about, know best of all, see in the
greatest detail and in the most pitiless light with the greatest
appreciation of the ambivalences at play is-what?
Right. Himself.
There is something of himself, after all, in every character he
properly creates. He understands people truly through understanding
himself truly.
The silent confessions he makes to himself are the greatest source of
wisdom he has. And of tolerance for others. And for love, even that.
There is the admission of hatred to awareness and its relief through
understanding and a kind of resolution in brotherhood.
What kind of person must a film director train himself to be?
What qualities does he need? Here are a few. Those of -A white hunter
leading a safari into dangerous and unknown country;
A construction gang foreman, who knows his physical problems and their
solutions and is ready, therefore, to insist on these solutions;
A psychoanalyst who keeps a patient functioning despite intolerable
tensions and stresses, both professional and personal;
A hypnotist, who works with the unconscious to achieve his ends;
A poet, a poet of the camera, able both to capture the decisive moment
of Cartier Bresson or to wait all day like Paul Strand for a single
shot which he makes with a bulky camera fixed on a tripod;
An outfielder for his legs. The director stands much of the day, dares
not get tired, so he has strong legs. Think back and remember how the
old time directors dramatized themselves. By puttees, right.
The cunning of a trader in a Baghdad bazaar.
The firmness of an animal trainer. Obvious. Tigers!
A great host. At a sign from him fine food and heartwarming drink
appear.
The kindness of an old-fashioned mother who forgives all.
The authority and sternness of her husband, the father, who forgives
nothing, expects obedience without question, brooks no nonsense.
These alternatively.
The illusiveness of a jewel thief-no explanation, take my word for
this one.
The blarney of a PR man, especially useful when the director is out in
a strange and hostile location as I have many times been.
A very thick skin.
A very sensitive soul.
Simultaneously.
The patience, the persistence, the fortitude of a saint, the
appreciation of pain, a taste for self-sacrifice, everything for the
cause.
Cheeriness, jokes, playfulness, alternating with sternness, unwavering
firmness. Pure doggedness.
An unwavering refusal to take less than he thinks right out of a
scene, a performer, a co-worker, a member of his staff, himself.
Direction, finally, is the exertion of your will over other people,
disguise it, gentle it, but that is the hard fact.
Above all-COURAGE. Courage, said Winston Churchill, is the greatest
virtue; it makes all the others possible.
One final thing. The ability to say "I am wrong," or 'I was wrong."
Not as easy as it sounds. But in many situations, these three words,
honestly spoken will save the day. They are the words, very often,
that the actors struggling to give the director what he wants, most
need to hear from him. Those words, "I was wrong, let's try it another
way," the ability to say them can be a life-saver.
The director must accept the blame for everything. If the script
stinks, he should have worked harder with the writers or himself
before shooting. If the actor fails, the director failed him! Or made
a mistake in choosing him. If the camera work is uninspired, whose
idea was it to engage that cameraman? Or choose those set-ups? Even a
costume after all-the director passed on it. The settings. The music,
even the goddamn ads, why didn't he yell louder if he didn't like
them? The director was there, wasn't he? Yes, he was there! He's
always there!
That's why he gets all that money, to stand there, on that mound,
unprotected, letting everybody shoot at him and deflecting the mortal
fire from all the others who work with him.
The other people who work on a film can hide.
They have the director to hide behind.
And people deny the auteur theory!
After listening to me so patiently you have a perfect right now to
ask, "Oh, come on, aren't you exaggerating to make some kind of
point?"
But only a little exaggerating.
The fact is that a director from the moment a phone call gets him out
of bed in the morning ("Rain today. What scene do you want to shoot?")
until he escapes into the dark at the end of shooting to face, alone,
the next days problems, is called upon to answer an unrelenting string
of questions, to make decision after decision in one after another of
the fields I've listed. That's what a director is, the man with the
answers.
Watch Truffaut playing Truffaut in Day for Night, watch him as he
patiently, carefully, sometimes thoughtfully, other times very
quickly, answers questions. You will see better than I can tell you
how these answers keep his film going. Truffaut has caught our life on
the set perfectly.
Not at all. The opposite. The more a director knows, the more he's
aware how many different ways there are to do every film, every scene.
And the more he has to face that final awful limitation, not of
knowledge but of character. Which is what? The final limitation and
the most terrible one is the limitations of his own talent. You find,
for instance, that you truly do have the faults of your virtues. And
that limitation, you can't do much about. Even if you have the time.
One last postscript. The director, that miserable son of a bitch, as
often as not these days has to get out and promote the dollars and the
pounds, scrounge for the liras, francs and marks, hock his family's
home, his wife's jewels, and his own future so he can make his film.
This process of raising the wherewithal inevitably takes ten to a
hundred times longer than making the film itself. But the director
does it because he has t~who else will? Who else loves the film that
much?
So, my friends, you've seen how much you have to know and what kind of
a bastard you have to be. How hard you have to train yourself and in
how many different ways. All of which I did. I've never stopped trying
to educate myself and to improve myself.
So now pin me to the wall-this is your last chance. Ask me how with
all that knowledge and all that wisdom, and all that training and all
those capabilities, including the strong legs of a major league
outfielder, how did I manage to mess up some of the films I've
directed so badly?
Ah, but that's the charm of it!
geoff alexander
> In article <2bf6ff6b.04061...@posting.google.com>,
> geoffale...@hotmail.com (geoff alexander) wrote:
>
> > Kazan was a coward. He failed to challenge HUAC, failed to question,
> > failed to stand up. That's not the worst thing a human being can do.
> > Later on, it seemed that he tried to justify this by claiming that he
> > believed these people were a real threat to this country. Of course,
> > they weren't, and everyone knows it, but that's what he had to do to
> > live with himself. Again, totally understandable. My wife's family
> > was pretty much destroyed by HUAC, hounded by the FBI, driven out of
> > their home town, and you know what, her grandfather, a labor organizer
> > and son of a Texas dirt farmer never backed down. If more people like
> > Kazan had taken a stand like my wife's grandfather did, HUAC might
> > have been blunted earlier on.
>
> Gotta disagree on this one. Kazan had been a member, and then
> repudiated the CP long before HUAC was so much as a gleam in anyone's
> eye. I've never seen anything to suggest that he didn't believe that
> Communism was a threat to the American way of life
Sure, but that's not the issue. The issue of his personal
responsibility hinges upon his belief that the people he helped to
expose to public shunning and personal destruction were a threat to
the American way of life. He knew they weren't.
Let's say I used to be a Muslim but saw that, despite its many
positive traits, there was a dangerous thread of fanaticism running
through Islam, so I decided to reject it. So, a few years later, the
U.S. government starts rounding up Muslims and they threaten me with
terrible repercussions if I don't cooperate in their indiscriminate
witch hunt (and HUAC was indescriminate). I decide that, since I
already know they have the names of the folks I went to Mosque with,
it won't make a difference for me to participate in a televised
charade designed to destroy them, I decide to cooperate even though I
know these particular folks aren't fanatics at all.
What does that make me? A coward.
>- a way of life he
> cherished as only an immigrant can.
>
> And, as an immigrant, he was in a postion where he could have been
> deported with the stroke of a pen. That meant that he really only had
> two choices - cooperate and give the Committee that kind of victory, or
> refuse, be deported, and give the committee a different kind of victory.
> How much more damage could the Committee have done if they had Kazan as
> an example of what happens to people who don't cooperate? Is
> professional suicide really expected, in defense of a cause you not only
> don't support, but actively oppose?
I don't know. But, it wasn't as much about causes as it was about
people. Should I expect that a former friend would risk professional
suicide rather than participate in destroying me...even though he
knows I've done nothing wrong?
Call me old fashioned, but, yeah.
>
> Kazan's decision wasn't an easy one:
I certainly agree with you there.
G
geoff alexander
>
> Furthermore, Kazan wasn't accusing anyone of a crime. He named the names
> of people who actually were communists, who actually had, at some point,
> hoped to see the revolution come to the US.
Oh, really. Amazing that you can know what was in the hearts and
minds of millions of people in the last century.
G
Ron
The question isn't whether or not you're a better person if you resist,
the question is if you have an obligation to resist, even if it means
destroying your own life and career.
I don't think this is an easy question.
Ron
I know the stated goals of the communist party. I have friends who were
members during the McCarthy period. I've read about what was discussed
at some communist meetings.
I don't even think it's neccesarily anti-American to want to see
socialism or communism (as it's theorized about, at least) in this
country, although I think those theories are naively utopian.
I've also read the works Ben Hecht -- who was, I believe, one of the
people Kazan named. I actually think his plays are pretty damn clear on
the subject. If you can't read the hearts and minds of a writer in his
work, how can you ever read it?
Probably by the McCarthy period these people no longer believed what
they were preaching in the 30s. But lefties of that era had a disturbing
habit of eating their own (witness, for example, what George Orwell went
through trying to get Homage to Catalonia published).
It would have been heroic for Kazan to refuse to name names, ruining
his own career in the process. Does his refusal to be heroic make him a
coward? Is there no gray area between the two, and, if not, if you must
either be a hero or a coward, then who of us has never been a coward?
-Ron
Jacques E. Bouchard
news:ronaldinho_m-5020...@individual.net:
> The question isn't whether or not you're a better person if you
> resist,
> the question is if you have an obligation to resist, even if it means
> destroying your own life and career.
>
> I don't think this is an easy question.
You don't have the "obligation", at least not legally, but you have a
moral one. Just like German citizens who knew about the death camps in Nazi
Germany. Their silence makes them accomplices.
jaybee
M.C.
"Jacques E. Bouchard" <jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
> You don't have the "obligation", at least not legally, but you have a
> moral one. Just like German citizens who knew about the death camps in Nazi
> Germany. Their silence makes them accomplices.
Well, now... I know I'm opening myself up to all kinds of
fully-justified attacks, but I can't help thinking it's awfully easy to
come up with that kind of judgement from the comfort of 50 years of
hindsight.
If we were living in Nazi Germany, I very much doubt if many of us would
opt for suicide by publicly denouncing the system -- and that's what it
would be, because the system would be guaranteed to step in and kill us
(and likely our loved ones) as a result.
There were some German citizens who did do just that, and in my book
they were the most courageous people of all in that era...
Jacques E. Bouchard
news:copespaz-162378...@mail.inter.net:
> In article <Xns950BBAFD45F69j...@63.223.5.254>,
> "Jacques E. Bouchard" <jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
>> You don't have the "obligation", at least not legally, but
>> you have a
>> moral one. Just like German citizens who knew about the death camps
>> in Nazi Germany. Their silence makes them accomplices.
>
> Well, now... I know I'm opening myself up to all kinds of
> fully-justified attacks, but I can't help thinking it's awfully easy
> to come up with that kind of judgement from the comfort of 50 years of
> hindsight.
Actually, my analogy should have been about those who denounced Jews
and rationalized that the Nazis already knew they were Jews.
jaybee
Mysti Berry
...
> >> > So why is this important now? Because Kazan to this day has never even
> >> >acknowledged that what he did was immoral, or had consequences, or even
> >> >that the eight he named were not in fact threats to the security of this
> >> >country. He destroyed the careers of eight men and their families who,
> >> >let's remember, had never so much as committed a crime in their lives.
> >> >They, along with many many others, including Kazen, had joined the
> >> >Communist Party in the 1930s, during the depression, when it seemed that
> >> >the capitalist vision was destroying America and all it stood for. None
> >> >of them was ever a spy, nor an espionage agent, nor certainly in any
> >> >sense a traitor. None of them was even prosecuted for anything
> >> >resembling a crime, because none of them had ever committed one. And yet
> >> >because of Kazan's testimony before the House Committee their careers,
> >> >and their lives, were destroyed.
> >>
> >>
> >> Well, Mysti, once again you are grossly misinformed. This might help
> >> a little:
> >>
> >> http://www.moderntimes.com/palace/kazan/
> >
> >Once again? How...compassionate of you.
>
> Yikes! The Myst talking about compassion when she takes such an
> UNcompassionate stand on Kazan?
you are clear that the hunk quoted above are not my words but from the
web site? do you remember that I started my piece saying i didn't know
if I would have been any better in Kazan's position? What precisely is
uncompassionate about that?
>
>
> >The site you quote proves my
> >point, that Kazan was unrepentent, this quote from the site above:
>
> Unrepentant in what sense? Jeez, here's a guy who half the world shat
> upon, and you want cries of "Mea culpa" from him?
an acknowledgement that his failure to follow through on his own plan
to not give names, his first gambit with Nixon in the non-public
meeting/hearing, cost people their livelihoods.
> Just how familiar are you with this part of history?
apparently I have access to a few details you missed...
>And Kazan brought the flame to Hollywood. Who are the
> criminals?
you can't honestly expect me to take seriously the condensation of 50
years of Russian and American film and theatrical history into three
paragraphs that end with the snappy "and Kazan brought the flame to
Hollywood." What *flame* exactly are you talking about?
>
> Kazan was a Turk.
You mean Greek.
Born in Istanbul when it was still called
> Constantinople under the last of the sultans,
it was called the Ottoman Empire.
> and that regime put the
> fear of God (or Allah) in anyone who lived there!
how much do you know about the Young Turks, Caroline?
> Kazan was an
> immigrant, and deportation back to Turkey was the last thing on God's
> green earth he wanted to have happen.
But those threats were not to
> come until later. As a member of Group Theater, he just got fed up
> with the party line...
>
> And left. In or around 1934.
Actually, the way HE tells it in HIS autobiography, they threw him
out.
>>
> Now, the POINT of this long historical background is to try to show
> you that GROUP THEATER was a matter of public record!
Why are you explaining something that's patently obvious?
> Kazan was
> pressured by 20th Century Fox and the HUAC to name the people who were
> active in Group Theater. It was like reading a copy of the phone book
> into the public record. Kazan DID NOT "ruin lives by betraying
> people."
Yes, he quite literally did. the same ruin he himself escaped by
giving names, something he tried not to do at first behind closed
doors. so obviously he understood at some point in time that giving
the names was reinforcing the ILLEGAL activities of McCarthy's
committee (and Miller's chilling 2000 recount of being asked to bribe
the committee into dropping his name using a photo-op with his
wife-to-be Monroe reinforces the CRIMINAL NATURE of the
proceedings...hello?)
> Anyone who knew anything about Broadway theater knew about
> who the members of Group Theater were. And if someone had questions,
> there were all the public records. How many members of Group Theater
> were card carrying communists? I don't know. But it was Group
> Theater that the HUAC was claiming was a "communist front
> organization" and wanted names from.
is it possible that you have missed the whole point of why HUAC was
wrong? that it was wrong to jail people for refusing to testify? that
there was nothing illegal or unamerican about being a communist? About
wanting the form of American government to change?
>
> Kazan was a patsy. The fall guy.
he was not. he knew it was wrong to give names at first, then when it
became clear the committee would not be satisfied with him testifying
honestly only about his own activities, a brave enough thing to do, he
caved. Pure and simple. And then spent the rest of his life saying
how right it was. it's kinda like Sophie from Sophie's choice saying
"I was right to pick the girl." INSANE! Understandable, but wrong.
> He was the ONLY member/former
> member of Group Theater who was nailed to the cross that I know of.
> Strasburg came out smelling like a rose.
Strasberg did not "smell like a rose". Odets & Garfield were broken.
>
> Mysti, I'm not going to go through the rest of your arguments point by
> point.
Obviously you can't. You seldome can. Your charade fools no one.
> I don't think it's useful. And I'm not sure that anyone who
> didn't live through those times can understand the national hysteria
> of those times.
Oh please. You're talking to a community of writers, and we've seen
similar (if not as intense) hysteria every twenty years since. Do you
have to live through bread riots to understand how terrifying they
are? Survive a dustbowl to understand desperate poverty-stricken
migration? I don't think so.
> I was a child during WWII and teenager during the
> communist hysteria.
and your grasp of the facts reflects your teenaged distraction.
> All during WWII, Americans were heavily
> propagandized with the Soviet Union as ally. And the day after the
> war ended, they were "the enemy." Within two weeks of the end of
> WWII, a dear family friend who was a Soviet rocket scientist working
> on a top secret project with U.S. rocket scientists was whisked from
> my young life, and no one would answer me honestly about where or why
> Olga had gone, except that she was "a communist." Well, she was a
> communist when she came to this country, so explain that to me!
Yes, well, the same damn thing happened to the wife of a friend of my
father's in the frikkin 1980s. She was Finnish, a "communist" and bam,
she was gone.
> The late 1940s and the early 50s were a nightmare.
As were the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and now.
> There is something
> strange, off-putting, and disgusting about the human race. Put us in
> situations of of great power, and very few of us behave well. Under
> the McCarthy frenzy, if you wanted to ruin someone, all you had to do
> was start a rumor that they were a communist or a communist
> sympathizer and they were dead meat. Fact or fiction, it was an
> indellible stain that nothing could remove.
And Kazan knew that, and named names anyway. he did the decent thing
and warned the people who were his friends. but he knew it was wrong,
and then he changed his mind, and he never acknowledged that he had
other choices.
>
> Now, exactly what is it that you wish Kazan had owned up to?
See above.
> That he
> was manipulated by the studio he worked for, betrayed by friends, and
> made the sacrificial lamb long after his HUAC appearance for reading
> the phone book to the McCarthy committee?
that he made it easy for McCarthy & co. to destroy Odets, Garfield...
>
> You can sit in all the judgement chairs you want,
You really must READ my posts before responding to them. I said in the
very first that I understood that he was between a rock and a hard
spot, and i didn't know if I'd be the couragous person I like to
believe I am or not. I believe my exact words were "I can't judge".
> and throw all the
> rocks you think you are righteously entitled to throw, but as for me,
> I lived in those times.
And learned precious little from them, apparently?
> They were pretty damned shitty, and while I
> haven't walked in Kazan's shoes, I've come too close for comfort.
News flash, we choose between our morals and our personal gain every
frikkin day. Some have a bigger effect than others, no doubt.
Mysti
Ron
"Jacques E. Bouchard" <jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
Ah, but Kazan made it clear he was only testifying under protest. So
it's not like he was a silent accomplice.
And as much as I find McCarthy to be a reprehensive individual, I'm a
little wary of the implicit comparison to Hitler in your post. I've no
interest in invoking Godwin's law, here, nor in defending McCarthy.
I'm just not sure at what point resistence rather than under-protest
acceptance becomes a moral obligation. I'm not claiming to have an
answer to this question, however.
-Ron
M.C.
> it's not like he was a silent accomplice.
I've told this story before in mws, but it seems appropriate to revisit
it.
When the RCMP and the Quebec Provinvial Police Fraud Squad were
investigating a prodco called Cinar for a raft of alleged crimes, they
interviewed me. I was quite happy to tell them what I knew about events
I had been very peripherally involved in (as an innocent dupe).
A lot of the investigation revolved around the use of Canadian writers
"fronting" for American writers so the company could get tax breaks.
At one point in the interview they asked me if I knew of any writers who
were not Canadian who had worked on Cinar shows, and if so if I would
give them their names. It really was strange to be asked to name names
of writers... all I could think of was the McCarthy hearings --
especially since my father had been hounded by the British authorities
and media in the early 50s for his leftist associations.
I said: "I feel really uncomfortable sitting in the RCMP headquarters
being asked to give you a list of names of fellow writers and I'm not
willing to do it. Besides, I'm quite sure you already have a list of
names."
At that point one of them reached into his briefcase and *produced* the
list of names! He asked me if I would be willing to look at it and tell
them what I knew about the nationalities of the people on it. That, I
didn't have a problem with -- mainly because I had absolutely no idea of
anyone's nationality. I looked at the list and said so.
geoff alexander
It's not an easy question, but it's an easy answer. The answer is,
Yes. I'm not saying I would have been any stronger than him, but I do
believe that he knew what he was doing was wrong.
G
geoff alexander
> In article <Xns950BBAFD45F69j...@63.223.5.254>,
> "Jacques E. Bouchard" <jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> > You don't have the "obligation", at least not legally, but you have a
> > moral one. Just like German citizens who knew about the death camps in Nazi
> > Germany. Their silence makes them accomplices.
>
> Well, now... I know I'm opening myself up to all kinds of
> fully-justified attacks, but I can't help thinking it's awfully easy to
> come up with that kind of judgement from the comfort of 50 years of
> hindsight.
>
> If we were living in Nazi Germany, I very much doubt if many of us would
> opt for suicide by publicly denouncing the system -- and that's what it
> would be, because the system would be guaranteed to step in and kill us
> (and likely our loved ones) as a result.
>
But, if people do denounce the system, if they create enough backlash
to stem that sort of Fascist tide, then the probability of those
Fascists coming to power and *being able* to impose a violent,
Draconian system is less likely. If enough Germans had rejected
Hitler in the thirties, there never would have been a Nazi Germany.
Had HUAC not been stopped when it was, and had enough variables in
this country been different, who knows how far McCarthy and his like
might have gone?
G
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen)
alexander) wrote:
>But, if people do denounce the system, if they create enough backlash
>to stem that sort of Fascist tide, then the probability of those
>Fascists coming to power and *being able* to impose a violent,
>Draconian system is less likely. If enough Germans had rejected
>Hitler in the thirties, there never would have been a Nazi Germany.
>Had HUAC not been stopped when it was, and had enough variables in
>this country been different, who knows how far McCarthy and his like
>might have gone?
>
>
>G
Geoff, history doesn't quite work that way. There is no clear
orientation while things are happening around you as to exactly where
you stand in the overall picture, or in your own specific flow of
things. Crystal balls and ouija boards and psychics don't help.
Example: Today!
George Bush did not win a popular or electoral college ellection. He
was basically "appointed" (and I use the term loosely) by the Supreme
Court of the United States, which our Constitution clearly says is not
to be comingled with the executive branch.
This unelected president plunged us into a totally unjustified war
because he apparently was in the throes of hysterics and seeing
bogeymen everywhere. To put it simply, he didn't have his facts
straight. Consequently a lot of people have died who shouldn't have
on both sides. And terrorists have been refueled, and we -- the
United States -- has done more to recruit terrorists than Osama bin
Laden ever dreamed of.
In another fifty years, assuming there are still people around and we
haven't all blown ourselves to smithereens on a global scale, there
will people decrying your inaction and mine for not taking back the
Constitution and restoring logic and order.
But hey, this is 2004, not 2054, and it's our turn now to grouse about
why German citizens didn't do something about the Nazis, or why Elia
Kazan didn't behave like a superhero and smack the HUAC and McCarthy
up alongside the head and put the country on a straight path.
Bottom line is that we, in our current situation, and the German
citizens of the war years, and Elia Kazan and all the rest of this
country acted in what seemed like the best way to handle things at
their/our points in time.
Anyone who has lived their life without any regrets hasn't really
lived their life.
Caroline
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen)
Mysi, *AGAIN* you are grossly misinformed! Elia Kazan was Greek by
HERITAGE, Turkish by BIRTH! Had he been deported, he would have been
deported to Turkey.
Yes. I do know a little something about Young Turks. I knew a few,
though they were no longer young, when I lived in Turkey in the late
1950s and all of 1960. In the 1960 coup d'etat, a dear friend's
father, whom I had met a few times and we were neighbors as well, was
executed for being friends with Menderes, the deposed prime minister.
Omar was politically opposed, but he and Menderes had been friends
since childhood and attended university together, and Omar -- who was
a senator -- had once flown to a meeting with Prime Minister Menderes
in his private plane. For that, he was executed by hanging, and
nothing his son or anyone else could do about it. I honest to god
*DO* know something about Turkish politics of the time, and believe
me, being deported to Turkey was NOT a viable option for Kazan under
*any* circumstances.
But I do find your total lack of compassion for Kazan disheartening.
No one is saying he did the right thing. We are saying, that given
the circumstances, he didn't have a chioce. Why aren't you angry at
20th Century Fox for putting Kazan's feet to the fire? Why aren't you
angry at Arthur Miller? Why aren't you angry at the American people
for letting the bullshit pile that high? Why are you so prissy-ass
moralistic about what Kazan should have done?
I see no point in responding to you further.
Caroline
On 17 Jun 2004 16:50:50 -0700, myst...@comcast.net (Mysti Berry)
wrote:
>"Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen)" <otto....@keepyourviruses-sbcglobal.net> wrote in message news:<ljjvc0pdh75v03nfp...@4ax.com>...
Steven J. Weller
What does that make the people who you went to Mosque with?
The people cowering in fear that someone in authority will find out that
they subscribed - willingly, as adults - to a belief system? I'll
concede, and always have, that Kazan wasn't the bravest little soldier
in the war for democracy. I don't think he had a lot of options, in
practical terms, but I can certainly see the argument that a braver man
might have stood before the committee and fallen on his sword.
But he wasn't the one hiding, either.
If the people he wasn't supposed to name weren't themselves cowards for
not stepping up to the microphone and proudly declaring "Yes, I was and
still am a Communist!" or "Yes, I was a Communist but I no longer hold
those beliefs" then how is Kazan a coward for not hiding them? Weren't
all involved afraid of the repercussions that would hurt them both
presonally and professionally? Was not every single person Kazan named
every bit as cowardly as Kazan is seen to be, for not stepping up to the
Committee and saying "you don't have to ask Eli; I'll tell you myself?"
Why should their interest in self-preservation be seen as somehow more
noble than his?
Dale and Mysti Berry
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen) wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 10:47:17 -0700, "Steven J. Weller"
> <az...@lafn.org> wrote:
>
>
>>You're a bigger man than most, then. What Kazan was forced into doing
>>was pretty awful, and it's not a choice he made easily. The choice he
>>made, in the end, was about saving himself, so it's hardly surprising
>>that he'd want to justify it after the fact with the same sorts of
>>rationale that allowed him to make that choice in the first place.
>
>
>
> You're right, Steven, but the thing that I find disturbing is that of
> all of the people who damn Kazan today for what he did yesterday, I
> don't hear them damning our government for allowing that kind of
> hate-mongering, fear-nurturing atmosphere to come about in the first
> place.
Then you weren't listening. Michael Moore, Maxine Hong Kingston, and
millions of people in California and across the world are trying to stop
the hate.
> Richard Nixon was VERY active in the McCarthy hearings, working for
> McCarthy.
In fact, he interviewed Kazan before the public hearing.
But the American people elected him president.
Some of the American people did, yes. And a lot of them fought him, and
a lot of them worked towards his impeachment when the evening news ran
with blood.
> And look at
> what an upstanding, moral character he turned out to be. There's a
> long list of people who helped McCarthy, including J. Edgar Hoover.
> Hey, let's name a building after him!
And they are all pretty reviled at this time, as is anyone whose
self-interest is exposed.
> As I've already made clear, I have great compasion for Elia Kazan.
As do many of us, possibly any of us who saw him as a very old man
receiving an Oscar.
> And then, Kazan aside, think about how complicity and/or laziness
> allows the dark side of our government to get the upper hand.
Or selfishness disguised as righteousness (sp), ala Kazan.
> Caroline
>
> If you'd prefer to read Kazan's comments on the DGA website -- with
> pictures, you can do it here:
> http://dga.org/index2.php3?chg=
Extra credit assignment: read Arthur Miller's thoughts on what it means
to be a writer, thanks.
> A screenplay's worth has to be measured less by its language than by
> its architecture and how that dramatizes the theme.
Wait, is that the stuff Caroline already learned and is sick of hearing
about? Nah...
Mysti
Dale and Mysti Berry
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen) wrote:
> On 17 Jun 2004 18:53:06 -0700, geoffale...@hotmail.com (geoff
> alexander) wrote:
>
>
>>But, if people do denounce the system, if they create enough backlash
>>to stem that sort of Fascist tide, then the probability of those
>>Fascists coming to power and *being able* to impose a violent,
>>Draconian system is less likely. If enough Germans had rejected
>>Hitler in the thirties, there never would have been a Nazi Germany.
>>Had HUAC not been stopped when it was, and had enough variables in
>>this country been different, who knows how far McCarthy and his like
>>might have gone?
>>
>>
>>G
>
>
>
> Geoff, history doesn't quite work that way. There is no clear
> orientation while things are happening around you as to exactly where
> you stand in the overall picture, or in your own specific flow of
> things. Crystal balls and ouija boards and psychics don't help.
It wasn't history when Kazan was making his choice. He knew the risks.
He struggled with them, per both him and Arthur Miller. He started to
make the right choice in his closed-door interview, but when they called
him back, he caved. To save his career. Which meant he knew that others'
careers would be destroyed as clearly documented elsewhere. He knew it
was wrong AT THE TIME...why else would he have warned the Strasbergs and
Odet(s?)...
>
> This unelected president plunged us into a totally unjustified war
> because he apparently was in the throes of hysterics and seeing
> bogeymen everywhere. To put it simply, he didn't have his facts
> straight. Consequently a lot of people have died who shouldn't have
> on both sides. And terrorists have been refueled, and we -- the
> United States -- has done more to recruit terrorists than Osama bin
> Laden ever dreamed of.
And we know it now, and we're fighting it. You've just disproved the
thesis of the 2nd paragraph of yours above. Why do you keep doing this?
>
> In another fifty years, assuming there are still people around and we
> haven't all blown ourselves to smithereens on a global scale, there
> will people decrying your inaction and mine for not taking back the
> Constitution and restoring logic and order.
None of us are prominent film directors whose words and actions carry
weight...
> But hey, this is 2004, not 2054, and it's our turn now to grouse about
> why German citizens didn't do something about the Nazis,
many of them did. AT THE TIME. My friend who wrote a dissertation on the
subject says that there were so many individual points of failure
between art student and head of the Third Reich that it is an
anti-miracle he succeeded...
> or why Elia
> Kazan didn't behave like a superhero and smack the HUAC and McCarthy
> up alongside the head and put the country on a straight path.
Now, now, it's not fair to throw up straw men like that :)
Plenty of people did the right if painful thing, it wasn't super-heroic,
it was simply acknowledging that something more important than personal
careers were at stake.
>
> Bottom line is that we, in our current situation, and the German
> citizens of the war years, and Elia Kazan and all the rest of this
> country acted in what seemed like the best way to handle things at
> their/our points in time.
No, not then and not now. Some folks did what they thought was right,
some folks hid from out-of-control regimes, and some folks put their
money and prestige AFTER their knowledge of what was right.
> Anyone who has lived their life without any regrets hasn't really
> lived their life.
I regret not taking more chances or sleeping with more men, but I do not
regret any of the moral choices I have made. Including declining to sic
the IRS on a relative who "stole" my father's entire inheritance.
Because it's wrong to loose the dogs of war. It's wrong to play
patty-cake with an outlaw, whether he's a senator or a bank robber or a
CEO, and it's pretty damned easy to spot them.
Mysti
Dale and Mysti Berry
M.C. wrote:
>fascinating story deleted
Thank you for sharing that story, I had not read it on mws before.
Cheers,
Mysti
Dale and Mysti Berry
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen) wrote:
> Mysi, *AGAIN* you are grossly misinformed! Elia Kazan was Greek by
> HERITAGE, Turkish by BIRTH! Had he been deported, he would have been
> deported to Turkey
I know he was born in Istanbul, it's readily available information, as
is the fact that he was Anatolian Greek. I'm writing about a period of
time now where ethnicities and nationalities don't exactly correspond,
about 2000 years of Chinese history...
By the way, I'll ask again, who said he would be deported? Did he report
such threats? Anyone else? A contempt charge doesn't usually start INS
proceedings these days (if you aren't Muslim)...I thought he had his
citizenship already, but I haven't been able to verify that.
>
> But I do find your total lack of compassion for Kazan disheartening.
Again with the unfounded accusations. i try not to put words in your
mouth, could you do me the same courtesy, please? otherwise I might have
to invoke the Murphy Brown rule :)
> No one is saying he did the right thing. We are saying, that given
> the circumstances, he didn't have a chioce.
Oh my god. He certainly did. Quite a few people made it.
Why aren't you angry at
> 20th Century Fox for putting Kazan's feet to the fire?
I'm disgusted at the behavior of film studio execs across a half-dozen
decades, for a variety of reasons. Why do you assume I'm not?
Why aren't you
> angry at Arthur Miller?
Why would I be angry at Arthur Miller? He refused to whore out his
wife-to-be, something you can't say about everyone who knew her...
> Why aren't you angry at the American people
> for letting the bullshit pile that high?
What makes you think I'm not as sad and disappointed that my father
believed the communism nonsense to his dying day as I am about Kazan's
poor choice and subsequent denial defenses?
> Why are you so prissy-ass
> moralistic about what Kazan should have done?
Why are you calling me names and ignoring my logical arguments and
questions? Why do you characterize my posts with such foul rhetoric?
>
> I see no point in responding to you further.
Ah, you have run out of ammunition. At least the sniping will stop.
here is a fair quote that probably most of us would agree with:
" at least Kazan’s sins were those of panic and of a peculiar kind of
immigrant insecurity and alienation, as opposed to arrogance and bored
patrician contempt. Some giants, after all, impress us precisely because
of their paradoxical smallness."
http://www.greekworks.com/english/politics/2003/1001_pappas.asp for the
full paragraphs...
Mysti
Jacques E. Bouchard
> If the people he wasn't supposed to name weren't themselves cowards
> for not stepping up to the microphone and proudly declaring "Yes, I
> was and still am a Communist!" or "Yes, I was a Communist but I no
> longer hold those beliefs" then how is Kazan a coward for not hiding
> them?
Oh, so now Kazan was justified for "outing" people? Remember a
constitutional right to assemble? Since when is it illegal for anyone to
belong to a political party and want to keep it secret?
jaybee
Ron
"Jacques E. Bouchard" <jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
It's not illegal, but they didn't swear oaths of secrecy, either.
I think Steve raises a very valid point; it seems like there are some
people who wanted Kazan to ruin his career to save theirs. Why not the
other way around? (Of all of them, he has the career most worth saving).
-Ron
Steven J. Weller
"Jacques E. Bouchard" <jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
Not illegal for anyone to belong to a political party, then or now.
Wanting to keep it a secret? That's not a matter of law, it's a matter
of desire. If you sign your name to something in the public record and
then, years later, decide that you'd rather it all be kept quiet, how
does that obligate Kazan or anyone else to keep your secret for you?
Given that the secret already isn't?
And given that trying to keep your secret for you will cost him his
career?
The folks he named didn't want to be named because they rightly saw that
being named would have a negative impact on their lives and livelihoods.
Enlightened self interest. Why exactly is Kazan's self-interest less
noble than theirs? Why should he - an avowed anti-communist since
before HUAC ever reared its ugly head - sacrifice his career so that
these other folks shouldn't have to sacrifice theirs? Why are their
careers worth more, intrinsically, than his? Why should they be, to
Kazan himself?
I don't claim that Kazan was "justified" in his decision. He had a
limited number of choices, all with bad outcomes guaranteed. He made
the choice that saved his own skin, after a lot of soul-searching. I
wouldn't wish his predicament on a dog, or even on DC Harris. I'm just
asking why, specifically, saving his own skin was the wrong thing to do,
given his particular circumstances? He could either get into the
lifeboat and let the other guy drown, or drown himself and hope that the
other guy made it into the lifeboat. What makes his life less important
than the other guy's, especially given that the other guy was already
drowning?
Steven J. Weller
"Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen)"
<otto....@keepyourviruses-sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> You're right, Steven, but the thing that I find disturbing is that of
> all of the people who damn Kazan today for what he did yesterday, I
> don't hear them damning our government for allowing that kind of
> hate-mongering, fear-nurturing atmosphere to come about in the first
> place.
It's sort of a given.
Steven J. Weller
Ron <ronald...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Thanks, Ron. Much more concise.
failedScreenwriter
jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca says...
Outing people? Sheesh, the two don't compare.
Kazan's moral dilemma is that he thought these folks a danger to his
country.
I suggest that a modern day equivalent would be if you once belonged to
an orginization that now openly supports terrorist bombers. As a former
member you have been called before congress to name everyone you knew as
a fellow member at the time of your membership.
What do you do and why?
failedScreenwriter
says...
> I know he was born in Istanbul, it's readily available information, as
> is the fact that he was Anatolian Greek. I'm writing about a period of
> time now where ethnicities and nationalities don't exactly correspond,
> about 2000 years of Chinese history...
>
> By the way, I'll ask again, who said he would be deported? Did he report
> such threats? Anyone else? A contempt charge doesn't usually start INS
> proceedings these days (if you aren't Muslim)...I thought he had his
> citizenship already, but I haven't been able to verify that.
>
>
Jacques E. Bouchard
news:MPG.1b3ca6fb1...@news.west.cox.net:
> Outing people? Sheesh, the two don't compare.
>
> Kazan's moral dilemma is that he thought these folks a danger to his
> country.
>
> I suggest that a modern day equivalent would be if you once belonged
> to an orginization that now openly supports terrorist bombers.
Communists and terrorist bombers? now THOSE two don't compare!
What we have here is one man trying to revise history. He acted out
of cowardice and is trying to justify his acts to escape the consequences
of his actions.
jaybee
Ken S.
news:2bf6ff6b.04061...@posting.google.com...
>
> But, if people do denounce the system, if they create enough backlash
> to stem that sort of Fascist tide, then the probability of those
> Fascists coming to power and *being able* to impose a violent,
> Draconian system is less likely. If enough Germans had rejected
> Hitler in the thirties, there never would have been a Nazi Germany.
> Had HUAC not been stopped when it was, and had enough variables in
> this country been different, who knows how far McCarthy and his like
> might have gone?
>
>
> G
Here's a group that *did* stand up to the fascists:
http://www.research.fsu.edu/researchr/fallwinter97/features/hitler.html
It's a shame this incident isn't more widely known. Maybe somebody should
write a screenplay about it...
-Ken S.
Ron
failedScreenwriter <sp...@iluvspam.bigspam> wrote:
> Kazan's moral dilemma is that he thought these folks a danger to his
> country.
Actually, he didn't. He was pretty certain that the people he was
naming were no risk to anyone. And said as much in his testimony.
I think part of the reason this was such a Big Deal (there were LOTS of
other people who named names, but they're not consistently attacked for
it today) is that Kazan originally said, "I'll testify, but I won't name
names."
And then they upped the pressure on him, and he went back and named
names.
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen)
wrote:
Hopefully, this will be my last contribution to this thread. It seems
awash with people who have already made up their minds, including
yours truly. But I do want to offer some information I think is
critical to both sides of the discussion.
Here is a link to Elia Kazan's written testimony that he submitted to
the HUAC at his own insistence in which he names names:
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/99/17/kazan.php
For those of you who did not live through those times and think they
somehow equate to the fears of terrorist threats today, they do not.
And for the record, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was not a
"communist" state, in the Marxist philosophical sense. It really
wasn't even a very successful socialist state. It was a totalitarian
state that, during the Cold War years, wanted to overthrow all of the
other governments in the world and replace them with it's own
totalitarian version of "communism." I have a friend who grew up on
the other side of the Iron Curtain, and got himself into a
whooooooooole lot of trouble by arguing with the Communist Party
trying to gain more creative freedom for other film industry creative
types. He argued well, using the Communist Party's own "constitution"
to support his arguments. It came very very very close to costing him
his life.
The fears of overthrow in this country were valid. The way that
Joseph McCarthy and his HUAC handled them were not. I remeber
wondering, at the time, why "the government" didn't just encourage
people to read more about communism in both the idealistic sense, and
the realities of the Soviet Union. But noooo... The last thing on
God's green earth any American citizen needed was to have his name on
a library card for having checked out anything by Karl Marx!
Dealing with half truths and what somebody else said is not dealing
with the reality. Hopefully you will all take the opportunity to read
Kazan's own words. And try to understand the times. There was no
internet, and you could come under survellance for buying, indeed
reading, the wrong books.
Caroline
Ron
>
> Hopefully, this will be my last contribution to this thread. It seems
> awash with people who have already made up their minds, including
> yours truly. But I do want to offer some information I think is
> critical to both sides of the discussion.
>
> Here is a link to Elia Kazan's written testimony that he submitted to
> the HUAC at his own insistence in which he names names:
You know, this whole "at his own insistence" is total B.S. Yes, I'm
aware of what he said there. I've also read his autobiography, and read
what he said there.
"At his own insistence" is a nice bit of agreed-upon fiction because he
faced having his career destroyed if he didn't go along. He may have
volunteered to go back, but that's NOT the same thing.
-Ron
Ron
One other correction I ought to make. When I wrote about Ben Hecht
earlier, I meant Clifford Odets. For some reason I always confuse those
two, which isn't fair to either of them.
Sorry about that.
-Ron
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen)
wrote:
Well, I intentionally didn't call attention to it in my post, but the
interesting thing, Ron, is his note at the bottom.
"I have placed a copy of this affidavit with Mr. Spyros P. Skouras,
president of Twentieth Century-Fox.
Elia Kazan"
I think that pretty much clears up just how "voluntary" it was.
Caroline
failedScreenwriter
jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca says...
> failedScreenwriter <sp...@iluvspam.bigspam> wrote in
> news:MPG.1b3ca6fb1...@news.west.cox.net:
>
> > Outing people? Sheesh, the two don't compare.
> >
> > Kazan's moral dilemma is that he thought these folks a danger to his
> > country.
> >
> > I suggest that a modern day equivalent would be if you once belonged
> > to an orginization that now openly supports terrorist bombers.
>
>
> Communists and terrorist bombers? now THOSE two don't compare!
I think it is easy to confuse the more sedate communist of the 70s' and
80s' with the zealots of the 40s', 50s', and 60s' that would without
compunction knock on the door of an Air Force colonel's home and throw
acid into the face of whomever answered, or slaughter millions of their
own citizens, or crush unarmed demonstraters under the tracks of fully
armed tanks. Further, I think it is laziness that fails to see the
simular zealotry of both the modern day terrorist bomber and the acid
throwing, million(s) of citizens slaughtering communist of the mid-20th
century.
>
> What we have here is one man trying to revise history. He acted out
> of cowardice and is trying to justify his acts to escape the consequences
> of his actions.
What consequence might that be?
>
>
>
>
> jaybee
>
>
Jacques E. Bouchard
news:MPG.1b3d4e669...@news.west.cox.net:
> In article <Xns950C7382028B5j...@63.223.5.254>,
> jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca says...
>> What we have here is one man trying to revise history. He
>> acted out
>> of cowardice and is trying to justify his acts to escape the
>> consequences of his actions.
>
> What consequence might that be?
Answering for his actions years down the road when his actions are
denounced.
jaybee
Dale and Mysti Berry
failedScreenwriter wrote:
> In article <Xns950C158671487j...@63.223.5.254>,
> jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca says...
>
>>"Steven J. Weller" <az...@lafn.org> wrote in
>>news:az941-743A3D....@individual.net:
>>
>>
>>>If the people he wasn't supposed to name weren't themselves cowards
>>>for not stepping up to the microphone and proudly declaring "Yes, I
>>>was and still am a Communist!" or "Yes, I was a Communist but I no
>>>longer hold those beliefs" then how is Kazan a coward for not hiding
>>>them?
>>
>>
>> Oh, so now Kazan was justified for "outing" people? Remember a
>>constitutional right to assemble? Since when is it illegal for anyone to
>>belong to a political party and want to keep it secret?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>jaybee
>>
>>
>
>
> Outing people? Sheesh, the two don't compare.
>
> Kazan's moral dilemma is that he thought these folks a danger to his
> country.
>
You honestly belive he thought Clifford Odets & John Garfield were
dangers to the country? Really?
> I suggest that a modern day equivalent would be if you once belonged to
> an orginization that now openly supports terrorist bombers. As a former
> member you have been called before congress to name everyone you knew as
> a fellow member at the time of your membership.
>
> What do you do and why?
That's the whole point. There wasn't a threat and McCarthy knew it, his
cronies knew it, the studios knew it, and Kazan knew it. What he said
after the fact to justify it is entirely different. You think the guy
who wanted his picture snapped with marilyn monroe really thought the
country was in danger, in so much danger that he was willing to trade
Miller's testimony for a snapshot? A better analogy would be if they
started holding hearings investigating anyone who said something
negative about Pres. Bush. Not a single real crime was ever uncovered by
the commision, like the weapons of mass destruction.
I believe Caroline when she says the general populace was afraid, that
they'd been whipped into a frenzy. But no one else was fooled. Not
Nixon, not Reagan, not McCarthy, not Arthur Miller or the studio heads.
And not Kazan. Which is why his behavior after that era upset people as
much as the choice he made.
IMHO, natch ;)
Mysti
Dale and Mysti Berry
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen) wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 09:43:52 -0700, Ron <ronald...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
> The fears of overthrow in this country were valid.
No they weren't, at least not the threat of overthrow from the
filmmaking and theatrical community. There is even evidence (not
complete) that the Rosenbergs weren't even a threat. It's amazing how
strongly this propoganda holds even in this day and age.
Stalin was a freak, but he'd murdered so many of his own people by the
time of HUAC, oh, bother...
> I remeber
> wondering, at the time, why "the government" didn't just encourage
> people to read more about communism in both the idealistic sense, and
> the realities of the Soviet Union. But noooo... The last thing on
> God's green earth any American citizen needed was to have his name on
> a library card for having checked out anything by Karl Marx!
And here we are again, amazing, eh?
>
> Dealing with half truths and what somebody else said is not dealing
> with the reality. Hopefully you will all take the opportunity to read
> Kazan's own words.
You know, it's really a good idea to get objective information as well
as information from the party most likely to be...um...not objective.
> And try to understand the times. There was no
> internet, and you could come under survellance for buying, indeed
> reading, the wrong books.
And now there's an internet, and you can be held without charge for
reading the wrong books. It's not that different a time, just now.
Mysti
Dale and Mysti Berry
failedScreenwriter wrote:
He's another one of the people whom the HUAC naming of names didn't
harm... NOT...
Makes me wonder if I'll get sent to Guantanamo for advocating a
three-party system :) (after this election, of course).
It's been fun listening to everyone's take on this.
Did anyone see Moore's interview on NBC? Matt Lauer was a bit...odd,
wasn't he?
Mysti
Dale and Mysti Berry
Ken S. wrote:
What, female protagonists? Who could sell that ;)
seriously, that's a fascinating bit of history, thanks for sharing the link!
A writer came to my school and read part of her novel, about when she
(it really happened) was kidnapped and tortured in Chile (El Salvador?
my mind is going), and about the women relatives of the disappeared who
gather every Thursday wearing a (white?) scarf. They've been doing it
for years, to keep pressure on the new gov't to identify the missing &
dead and bring the old regime to justice.
I don't know why collective peaceful action has fallen into such ill
repute. Perhaps it's the bad chants?
Mysti
Joe Myers
> > What consequence might that be?
>
> Answering for his actions years down the road when his actions are
> denounced.
I haven't read the book and I haven't been following this thread
religiously, so if I repeat stuff, sue me.
People don't seem to remember that the Russians were our allies in World War
II. But even more, people don't understand how close the United States came
to becoming a communist society during the Great Depression. The late
William Manchester wrote in "The Glory and the Dream," in vivid detail, of
just how desperate the United States (and, indeed, the world) was in 1932.
A quarter of the work force was unemployed and a sizeable percentage of the
population didn't need a lot of convincing that Capitalism was a failed
experiment. When you're drowning, you grab for anything that looks like
it'll float.
Fast-forward twenty years and you have the Republicans, out of power for
five presidential terms, and they *needed* a bogeyman. Hell, yes, Stalin
was evil. But 20 million Russians died in WWII and he was scared shitless
about an American atomic bomb monopoly. So there were spies in the U.S.
But the "Hollywood 10," weren't stealing nuclear secrets. And the
Red-Baiting was more than a little bit fueled by anti-Semitism bullying.
The targets of HUAC and McCarthy show trials were, for the most part, former
curious college students who signed up for the newsletter in the 30s. And
they *were* show trials.
Most of the people who "named names" were given the list by Roy Cohn and
others behind the scenes. The people who "named names" were telling the
committees nothing they didn't already know. They were like the untrained
puppy with the committees poking their noses into a youthful accident.
When I look at Kazan's post-Red Baiting body of work, I suspect he did more
for the progressive cause than reciting a list of names of former political
activists. I admire Lillian Hellman and believe her, "I Cannot and Will Not
Cut My Conscience to Fit This Year’s Fashions” statement was one of the most
important patriotic stands in the history of this republic. That took
courage. Extraordinary courage.
I can't chastise someone for not displaying extraordinary courage.
Joe Myers
"If you can take the hot lead enema, you
can cast the first stone." -- Lenny Bruce
Steven J. Weller
"Joe Myers" <monke...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> When I look at Kazan's post-Red Baiting body of work, I suspect he did more
> for the progressive cause than reciting a list of names of former political
> activists. I admire Lillian Hellman and believe her, "I Cannot and Will Not
> Cut My Conscience to Fit This Yearıs Fashions² statement was one of the most
> important patriotic stands in the history of this republic. That took
> courage. Extraordinary courage.
>
> I can't chastise someone for not displaying extraordinary courage.
>
> Joe Myers
> "If you can take the hot lead enema, you
> can cast the first stone." -- Lenny Bruce
Again, my point made clearer by a better writer.
Jacques E. Bouchard
news:4aSAc.1587$q15...@newssvr25.news.prodigy.com:
> I can't chastise someone for not displaying extraordinary courage.
>
> Joe Myers
> "If you can take the hot lead enema, you
> can cast the first stone." -- Lenny Bruce
But Kazan didn't ask for forgiveness, or understanding. All he came
up with was feeble justifications.
jaybee
Ron
failedScreenwriter <sp...@iluvspam.bigspam> wrote:
> I think it is easy to confuse the more sedate communist of the 70s' and
> 80s' with the zealots of the 40s', 50s', and 60s' that would without
> compunction knock on the door of an Air Force colonel's home and throw
> acid into the face of whomever answered, or slaughter millions of their
> own citizens, or crush unarmed demonstraters under the tracks of fully
> armed tanks. Further, I think it is laziness that fails to see the
> simular zealotry of both the modern day terrorist bomber and the acid
> throwing, million(s) of citizens slaughtering communist of the mid-20th
> century.
On the other hand, many American Communists of the 30s -50s were
genuinely ignorant of the atrocities commited in the name of the
revolution. There was a lot of propaganda aimed at convincing those
people that the reports they heard were made up by the western
imperialist/capitalist press.
I've referenced Orwell before, but he was basically a pariah for a
while after he wrote "Homage to Catalonia." Why? Because it paints a
picture of Communists being obsessed by power, working at cross-purposes
to each other, and undercutting each other; of course he must have been
a fascist stooge! Who else would write such a thing.
Well now, of course, we know better. We've got more reliable sources of
information and fewer newspapers willing to blatantly lie for political
ends.
So basically I think it's pretty misinformed for you to equate the
people who Kazan was naming to the people who were throwing acid and/or
slautering millions, because the overlap between those two groups of
people was zero -- despite the fact that they both called themselves
"communists."
-Ron
Ron
"Jacques E. Bouchard" <jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
> But Kazan didn't ask for forgiveness, or understanding. All he came
> up with was feeble justifications.
Given the way he was treated by people after the affair, I'm not at all
surprised he felt no need to ask for forgiveness.
I'd encourage you to read his book. It's fascinating. It's also far
more than "feeble justifications." It's a highly self-criticial, honest,
and fascinating work, and quite possibly the best autobiography I've
ever read.
-Ron
failedScreenwriter
jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca says...
forgiveness? Should his kiss the ring too?
failedScreenwriter
ronald...@hotmail.com says...
Ron--
Stupidity and ignorance, though usually in great abundance on all sides
of any issue, is not an excuse for those who supported the thugs.
HUAC was ugly, but like others have said already, why did those who knew
they were targets of an investigation allow Kazan to stand alone before
the committee. Why didn't they come forward and claim ownership of their
beliefs and actions--it isn't as if they'd done anything wrong, right?
Those named didn't stand shoulder to shoulder with Kazan. They scurried
into the showdows like little rats and whispered "bravely" about Kazan's
failure to repudiate HUAC and protect their good name.
This gets even more bizarre when we realize that Humphry Bogart did the
same as Kazan and no one cast him as villian. Why?
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen)
<sp...@iluvspam.bigspam> wrote:
>This gets even more bizarre when we realize that Humphry Bogart did the
>same as Kazan and no one cast him as villian. Why?
Bogart wasn't an immigrant, therefore he was a more difficult target.
Ron
failedScreenwriter <sp...@iluvspam.bigspam> wrote:
> Stupidity and ignorance, though usually in great abundance on all sides
> of any issue, is not an excuse for those who supported the thugs.
Well, there are times when people should know, and don't. In those
circumstances, I have no problem holding peopel to a very high standard.
But those were not the circumstances surrounding communism in the 30s.
I think if you're somehow claiming that the people Kazan should have
known about the various ills committed in the name of communism, you're
engaging in 20-20 hindsight.
> This gets even more bizarre when we realize that Humphry Bogart did the
> same as Kazan and no one cast him as villian. Why?
I suspect because when Bogart was called, he didn't muss, didn't fuss,
just went and testified. Kazan DIDN'T name names the first time, thus
setting himself up for a bigger fall.
It's the difference between and infidel and a heretic. You try to
convert the infidel, or you drive him out of town, but you burn a
heretic at the stake. Kazan made it clear he understood what it meant to
name names by refusing to do it, so when he changed his mind, it had
extra sting.
Jacques E. Bouchard
news:MPG.1b3df798c...@news.west.cox.net:
> HUAC was ugly, but like others have said already, why did those who
> knew they were targets of an investigation allow Kazan to stand alone
> before the committee. Why didn't they come forward and claim ownership
> of their beliefs and actions--it isn't as if they'd done anything
> wrong, right?
Because it was a witch hunt. It was not a trial.
jaybee
Jacques E. Bouchard
news:MPG.1b3df3a9c...@news.west.cox.net:
> In article <Xns950D27DD02DE9j...@63.223.5.254>,
> jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca says...
>>
>> But Kazan didn't ask for forgiveness, or understanding. All
>> he came
>> up with was feeble justifications.
>>
> So you hate him because he didn't fall to his knees, weep, and beg for
> forgiveness? Should his kiss the ring too?
"Hate"? You're reading a lot into my reply, aren't you?
Wanna take a minute to breathe and try again?
jaybee
Steven J. Weller
"Jacques E. Bouchard" <jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
Was it just a witch hunt where they were concerned, or was it also a
witch hunt where Kazan was concerned? In other words, was the nature of
the experience different for him and for them?
He was forced into a situation where he had two choices - cooperate, or
committ professional suicide. Save himself, or make a meaningless
gesture (meaningless because the committee already had the names). The
only third choice couldn't have been made by Kazan; only by the people
he named (at least some of whom, he warned in advance). They could have
come forward themselves, and eliminated the committee's need for Kazan's
testimony altogether.
As has already been noted, Kazan didn't do the "brave" thing; he didn't
fall on his sword as an empty gesture. The question being asked is
simply, if Kazan is to be castigated for his lack of bravery, what are
we to say of the people who didn't choose to save HIM, by falling on
their own swords? Why is his act of self-preservation, in the face of a
witch hunt, 'cowardice,' while theirs is somehow noble?
Jacques E. Bouchard
> As has already been noted, Kazan didn't do the "brave" thing; he didn't
> fall on his sword as an empty gesture. The question being asked is
> simply, if Kazan is to be castigated for his lack of bravery, what are
> we to say of the people who didn't choose to save HIM, by falling on
> their own swords? Why is his act of self-preservation, in the face of a
> witch hunt, 'cowardice,' while theirs is somehow noble?
Wait a minute, are you lisytening to what you're saying? The argument
goes that the accusesd should have volunteered to go before the committee
to "confess" in order to save Kazan the difficult choice of naming names.
Aren't you asking that the accused do precisely what you're saying
Kazan shouldn't have had to do?
jaybee
Steven J. Weller
"Jacques E. Bouchard" <jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
I'm saying that both Kazan and the people he was backed into naming were
in very, very similar situations. Both could get into a lot of trouble
by refusing to cooperate, but refusing to cooperate would have helped
their friends out of a jam, to one degree or another. Elia could have
stood before the Committee and said "I ain't sayin' nuthin, so screw you
all" and he would have lost his career, his income, possibly his
citizenship. That, unquestionably, would have been the brave thing for
him to do.
The people who he named could also have gone before the Committee and
said "You don't have to ask Elia anything; here we are, here's our
position, then and now, and let the chips fall where they may." That,
too, would have been the brave thing to do, especially given that doing
so would have meant the end of their careers. Exactly like the way
Kazan's career would have ended had he _refused_ to testify.
Would stepping forward and 'coming out' to the Committee have really
saved Kazan? No way of knowing, really. Just speculation that they
would have left him alone once he had no more names that weren't already
in the newspapers. Just like it's just speculation that had Kazan
refused to testify, he would have been deported (the blacklist, though,
is hardly a question of speculation, then or now).
I'm not asking (or, since this was all over decades ago, suggesting)
that anyone should do/have done anything. What I'm asking is just that,
if Kazan's actions make him a bad guy - which seems to be the position
you've been taking, and correct me if I'm wrong - for what he did, then
why isn't exactly the same judgement passed on the people he named? Why
was his cowardly act of self-preservation, at the expense of the lives
and livelihoods of his friends, somehow more henious that his friends'
cowardly acts of self-preservation, at the expense of Kazan's life and
livelihood? Why, specifically, should Kazan have been expected to fall
on his sword but the others, specifically, shouldn't have had to fall on
theirs?
That's all I'm asking.
failedScreenwriter
otto....@keepyourviruses-sbcglobal.net says...
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen)
<az...@lafn.org> wrote:
>The people who he named could also have gone before the Committee and
>said "You don't have to ask Elia anything; here we are, here's our
>position, then and now, and let the chips fall where they may." That,
>too, would have been the brave thing to do, especially given that doing
>so would have meant the end of their careers. Exactly like the way
>Kazan's career would have ended had he _refused_ to testify.
I dunno. I'm not entirely convinced, Steven. Well, I'm convinced
about Kazan. It's the rest I'm not so convinced about. Do you have
any idea how many "artists" -- actors, writers, musicians, painters,
sculptors -- left this country because of the HUAC? There was a mass
exodus from this country that was uncomfortably similar to the Jewish
exodus from Germany. Some still haven't come back!
During the McCarthy Era, Roosevelt was already dead. Died just before
the end of the war. The "Red Menace" was leering from every shadow!
At least that's what we were told. Socialism was the next worst thing
to communism. BUT...! Define "socialism." Social Security is still
with us. A Roosevelt plan. Our current "Department of Human Serices"
in most states is a revision of things that Roosevelt introduced.
Unemployment. Disability. During the Great Depression, it was
sometimes *extremely* difficult to differentiate between "American,"
"socialist," and occasionally even "communist." That's why many legal
organizations were called "communist fronts" during the McCarthy Era.
Organizatons that had seem inoccuous enough at the time sometimes
really did turn out to have ulterior motives... They were fronts.
But that didn't mean people knew it when they joined.
Two artist friends fled to Mexico during the McCarthy Era, neither was
a communist, both fled to Mexico from New York, and both were
extremely talented individuals. I know of more artists, painters,
musicians, etc. than I can count who fled to Europe or UK as well.
Now....
WHAT IF....
What if all of those people had gone before the HUAC and said, "Yeah,
I joined Such-And-Such-Eutopian Society. It sounded good. But after
I paid dues a while, I started feeling that's not the kind of group I
wanted to belong to, so I quit."
What if hundreds, maybe thousands of artists had done that?
At the risk of sounding hoaky, McCarthy was extremely successful at
turning out the lights, telling bogey-man stories, and scaring the
bejeezus out of U.S. citizens.
But what if a whoooooooole bunch of U.S. citizens had banded together
and turned the lights back on?
Eventually someone did. One lone guy. Edward R. Murrow. But by that
time we had damned near as many American artists living in other
countries as we had living here.
But what if a bunch of people had turned the lights on sooner?
Caroline
Looking forward to Fahrenheit 9/11 and hoping some lights come back
on.
Steven J. Weller
> On Sat, 19 Jun 2004 18:29:42 -0700, "Steven J. Weller"
> <az...@lafn.org> wrote:
>
> >The people who he named could also have gone before the Committee and
> >said "You don't have to ask Elia anything; here we are, here's our
> >position, then and now, and let the chips fall where they may." That,
> >too, would have been the brave thing to do, especially given that doing
> >so would have meant the end of their careers. Exactly like the way
> >Kazan's career would have ended had he _refused_ to testify.
>
> I dunno. I'm not entirely convinced, Steven.
I'm not offering answers. I'm asking question.
> Well, I'm convinced
> about Kazan. It's the rest I'm not so convinced about. Do you have
> any idea how many "artists" -- actors, writers, musicians, painters,
> sculptors -- left this country because of the HUAC? There was a mass
> exodus from this country that was uncomfortably similar to the Jewish
> exodus from Germany. Some still haven't come back!
There's a difference, to me at least, between expatriating and being
deported. I can certainly see where the situation in the US could once
again deteriorate to the point that Americans of good conscience would,
in large numbers, choose to live elsewhere. Choice, though, is the
issue. Kazan could have chosen to leave, as could (and did, at least,
some of) the people he named. He chose to stay.
Again, not the bravest choice in front of him, but I still have a hard
time castigating the man for not being extraordinarily brave.
(snip)
> WHAT IF....
>
> What if all of those people had gone before the HUAC and said, "Yeah,
> I joined Such-And-Such-Eutopian Society. It sounded good. But after
> I paid dues a while, I started feeling that's not the kind of group I
> wanted to belong to, so I quit."
>
> What if hundreds, maybe thousands of artists had done that?
>
> At the risk of sounding hoaky, McCarthy was extremely successful at
> turning out the lights, telling bogey-man stories, and scaring the
> bejeezus out of U.S. citizens.
>
> But what if a whoooooooole bunch of U.S. citizens had banded together
> and turned the lights back on?
>
> Eventually someone did. One lone guy. Edward R. Murrow. But by that
> time we had damned near as many American artists living in other
> countries as we had living here.
>
> But what if a bunch of people had turned the lights on sooner?
And all I've been asking is, what if it had started with the people
Kazan was forced to name? That would have been a much braver choice
than the one Kazan eventually made. The choice they _did_ make, though,
seems to me to be about the same as the one he made. But for some
reason, Kazan is seen as the bad guy and they are seen as his victims,
almost as much as they're seen as the victims of the HUAC.
As far as the stuff I've snipped, I'm with you on pretty much all of it.
Organizations don't speak, with absolute and complete auhority, for
everyone who stopped in to a meeting on a cold night for the free coffee
and donuts. This shouldn't be a difficult concept to grasp, then or
now, but the HUAC made it seem unthinkable - at least for a while. The
Red Scare was really and truly that - a scare. Not enough people were
brave enough, soon enough, to stand up and say that Emporer McCarthy had
no clothes.
Kazan certainly wasn't the bravest little soldier for democracy, as I've
said before. But neither were a lot of other people, whom history seems
to remember a lot more charitably.
Steven J. Weller
failedScreenwriter <sp...@iluvspam.bigspam> wrote:
I think a part of it, too (and I may be mis-remembering this) was that
Bogey didn't have a lot of moral quandries with his testimony. He
believed in the Red Menace and supported the HUAC's actions to save us
from same, so of course he testified. Kazan gets the rap, at least in
part, because he knew better but did it anyway.
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen)
I'm not convinced that he wasn't brave. He certainly wrestled with
his conscience. I think that sometimes situations occur in life in
which you do the very best you can. You think that your actions are
as plain as the nose on an elephants face. And you think that people
will see the clear message of what you have done.
I've submitted two documents in this thread, both written by Kazan.
They are his written statement to the HUAC, and his address on what it
takes to be a director. If you've already deleted them, look them up
on Google and compare them. One is a plain vanilla, unimaginative
flat statement of facts. The other is an eloquent, creative, genius
of an address. I think Kazan knew what he was doing when he wrote his
statement for HUAC. Spyros Whatsiz told him he had to do it if he
ever wanted to make another picture for Fox. He was under contract --
so to speak -- to Fox, so that meant if he ever wanted to make another
picture. Period.
I think that by putting that note at the bottom of the HUAC statement
saying he had sumbitted a copy to Spyros/Fox, it was his way of
saying, "Look, this bastard's got a gun to my head." And I think he
figured people would either get the message or they wouldn't. And
like explaining a joke, if he had to explain that... Well, if people
aren't smart enough to catch a joke, explaining the joke isn't going
to make them smarter. And if people didn't understand what he did,
then explaining wasn't going to help.
I think he lived by that.
I am now and always have been a great admirer of Kazan. I think the
guy was a genius. I think he got a raw deal. But then Hollywood does
that to geniuses. Look at Billy Wilder... '-)
Caroline
Joe Myers
> Was it just a witch hunt where they were concerned, or was it also a
> witch hunt where Kazan was concerned? In other words, was the nature of
> the experience different for him and for them?
>
> He was forced into a situation where he had two choices - cooperate, or
> committ professional suicide. Save himself, or make a meaningless
> gesture (meaningless because the committee already had the names). The
> only third choice couldn't have been made by Kazan; only by the people
> he named (at least some of whom, he warned in advance). They could have
> come forward themselves, and eliminated the committee's need for Kazan's
> testimony altogether.
>
> As has already been noted, Kazan didn't do the "brave" thing; he didn't
> fall on his sword as an empty gesture. The question being asked is
> simply, if Kazan is to be castigated for his lack of bravery, what are
> we to say of the people who didn't choose to save HIM, by falling on
> their own swords? Why is his act of self-preservation, in the face of a
> witch hunt, 'cowardice,' while theirs is somehow noble?
I suspect there was a lot of "it couldn't happen here" mentality at work in
the 50s. Most of America had made huge sacrifices less than 10 years before
in the cause of "The American Way." Most of America was busy in the 50s
raising baby boomers and paying off the Studebaker and their salt box in the
suburbs. If somebody in the Senate said there were a bunch of commies
infiltrating America, *and* that Senator McCarthy was taking care of the
problem, most of America accepted it and went about their business and took
their kids to Little League practice.
Think about it. It took another 15 years before people started getting the
drift that Richard Nixon had other motives than the welfare of the nation in
mind.
Americans were quite naive. And, I suspect, Kazan was motivated by his art
far more than by anyone's politics. If reading off a list of names could
keep him in the arts, the down-side was minimal, especially since the names
he named were provided for him by the committee. He wasn't telling them
anything they didn't already know, and the definition of "communist" was so
distorted by the Republicans any connection with reality was purely
coincidental.
After the battle's over, a lot of people can tell you what they *would have
done.*
Me? I can't guarantee I wouldn't have been hunkering down in a fox hole
waiting for it all to blow over.
You can? Fine.
Jacques E. Bouchard
> Think about it. It took another 15 years before people started
> getting the drift that Richard Nixon had other motives than the
> welfare of the nation in mind.
>
> Americans were quite naive.
"Were"? You mean like the majority of Americans thinking there's a
link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida because Bush told them there is?
jaybee
failedScreenwriter
jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca says...
Ok, if it pleases you how about "despise"? Maybe "loath"? If none of
those then why would you think he needs forgiveness?
Jacques E. Bouchard
news:MPG.1b3f4514e...@news.west.cox.net:
> *sigh*.
>
> Ok, if it pleases you how about "despise"? Maybe "loath"? If none of
> those then why would you think he needs forgiveness?
As you said: *sigh*.
It seems that you lost your train of thought. Let's go back a few
messages up the thread.
Someone said, "I can't chastise someone for not displaying
extraordinary courage."
I replied, "But Kazan didn't ask for forgiveness, or understanding.
All he came up with was feeble justifications."
In other words, he shows no remorse for his actions. In other,
OTHER words, it isn't just that he was FORCED to act the way he did
(which is the argumenbt of those supporting him), but that he thinks he
acted rightly.
There. Now you're back up to speed.
jaybee
failedScreenwriter
jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca says...
> I replied, "But Kazan didn't ask for forgiveness, or understanding.
> All he came up with was feeble justifications."
>
>
partial post: " But Kazan didn't ask for forgiveness, or understanding.
"
If it is not your intent he apologize then I retract my argument.
Steven J. Weller
"Joe Myers" <monke...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> I suspect there was a lot of "it couldn't happen here" mentality at work in
> the 50s. Most of America had made huge sacrifices less than 10 years before
> in the cause of "The American Way." Most of America was busy in the 50s
> raising baby boomers and paying off the Studebaker and their salt box in the
> suburbs. If somebody in the Senate said there were a bunch of commies
> infiltrating America, *and* that Senator McCarthy was taking care of the
> problem, most of America accepted it and went about their business and took
> their kids to Little League practice.
>
> Think about it. It took another 15 years before people started getting the
> drift that Richard Nixon had other motives than the welfare of the nation in
> mind.
>
> Americans were quite naive.
But it's not Americans in general that we're talking about. It's Kazan
and the handful of people whose names he gave, and all involved were
more than aware of what Nixon was, what was being done, etc.
> And, I suspect, Kazan was motivated by his art
> far more than by anyone's politics. If reading off a list of names could
> keep him in the arts, the down-side was minimal, especially since the names
> he named were provided for him by the committee. He wasn't telling them
> anything they didn't already know, and the definition of "communist" was so
> distorted by the Republicans any connection with reality was purely
> coincidental.
That, to me, seems like 20/20 hindsight. Kazan, by his words and
actions before and after the fact, was a lot more conflicted about it
than that. The downside was hardly minimal - he was a pariah for years,
lost lifelong friends, and obviously felt terrible about the choice he
was forced to make. Ironically, it was just this awareness that made
him seem worse in some people's eyes - Bogart did what he did because he
believed it was he right thing to do. Honest men will disagree about
what the right thing to do, is, but it's hard to fault someone for doing
what they believe in their hearts is right. Kazan knew the nature of
what he was doing, but felt he had to do it anyway, so he takes the heat.
> After the battle's over, a lot of people can tell you what they *would have
> done.*
I'm not saying what I would have done; I'm asking about what the people
involved actually did (and didn't) do.
You do something that can get you into serious trouble. I know about
it. The police come to me because they know I know about it. Not
telling them what I know will get me into serious trouble - every bit as
serious as the trouble you'll get into if I _do_ tell.
I have two choices. I can tell, save myself, and get you into trouble.
I can not tell, save you (hopefully), and get myself into trouble.
That's pretty much the list.
You, though, also have choices. You can confess yourself, get yourself
into trouble, and save me in the process. Or you can keep your mouth
shut, save yourself, and let me hang - hoping that I'll protect you,
asking me to sacrifice myself in the process. Expecting me to do the
brave thing for you, when you're not willing to do it for me.
Why would my act of self-preservation (squealing on you) be somehow less
noble than your act of self-preservation (letting me twist in the wind )?
> Me? I can't guarantee I wouldn't have been hunkering down in a fox hole
> waiting for it all to blow over.
>
> You can? Fine.
I can't.
WRabkin
>into trouble, and save me in the process. Or you can keep your mouth
>shut, save yourself, and let me hang - hoping that I'll protect you,
>asking me to sacrifice myself in the process. Expecting me to do the
>brave thing for you, when you're not willing to do it for me.
>
>Why would my act of self-preservation (squealing on you) be somehow less
>noble than your act of self-preservation (letting me twist in the wind )?
>
names of people to indict. They weren't. They had the names. And if everyone
Kazan named turned himself in the day before the hearing, they'd still demand
he name names.
This wasn't about compiling a list of possible "enemies." This was about
forcing people whose political opinions the committee members despised to
betray each other and to swear fealty to HUAC.
I'd recommed you read Victor Navasky's Naming Names for a greater
understanding. But if you don't feel like slogging through a couple hundred
pages of (very entertainingly written) history, rent The Front. It's fiction,
yes, but written and directed and -- to a great extent -- acted by men who went
through the blacklist and know what it was all about.
Jacques E. Bouchard
news:MPG.1b3f4f718...@news.west.cox.net:
> Ok, maybe you're right. I'm sure I misread the intent of the following
> partial post: " But Kazan didn't ask for forgiveness, or understanding.
> All he came up with was feeble justifications.
> "
>
> If it is not your intent he apologize then I retract my argument.
If the argument was that he was coerced, then he should at least
express regret.
jaybee
Steven J. Weller
wra...@aol.com (WRabkin) wrote:
> >You, though, also have choices. You can confess yourself, get yourself
> >into trouble, and save me in the process. Or you can keep your mouth
> >shut, save yourself, and let me hang - hoping that I'll protect you,
> >asking me to sacrifice myself in the process. Expecting me to do the
> >brave thing for you, when you're not willing to do it for me.
> >
> >Why would my act of self-preservation (squealing on you) be somehow less
> >noble than your act of self-preservation (letting me twist in the wind )?
> >
> Steven, you're acting on the assumption that HUAC was actually looking for
> names of people to indict. They weren't. They had the names. And if everyone
> Kazan named turned himself in the day before the hearing, they'd still demand
> he name names.
You don't - can't - know that, any more than I know that Kazan would
have been deported had he refused to cooperate.
> This wasn't about compiling a list of possible "enemies." This was about
> forcing people whose political opinions the committee members despised to
> betray each other and to swear fealty to HUAC.
It was mostly about getting into, and staying in, the headlines.
Getting Kazan to testify was newsworthy and important - that's why they
made him do it. Had the people on his personal list stolen that thunder
and made their own headlines, there would have been no reason to force
Kazan to testify. What's he gonna say, "yeah, those guys are tellin'
the truth - they were/are Communists?" Where's the value in that?
Where's the value in threatening him if he doesn't step up to the mic
and rat out a list of people who've already confessed?
Everybody, including the people Kazan named, knew the Committee already
had the names. It wasn't much of a secret. To me, that makes their
choice, to try and hide when it was clear they'd already been found out
(and yes, I know that what was found out about them shouldn't have made
any difference; they didn't actually do anything wrong) even less brave
than Kazan's choice to cooperate, under protest, and confirm for the
record information that already needed no additional confirmation. It's
like they were already fatally wounded, but still blame Kazan for not
throwing himself in front of bullet #7. Bullets 1-6 had already done
the job, why should he have to sacrifice himself?
Steven J. Weller
"Jacques E. Bouchard" <jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
Says who? You?
Who died and made you the final arbiter of this stuff?
Kazan wasn't able to just name a list of names and then tell the HUAC to
f*ck off; he was forced to cooperate. There was a chunk of time during
which he still could have gotten into a lot of serious, career-ending
trouble had he made a big deal out of opposing the HUAC.
Personally, I see great remorse in his justifications (no one tries to
justify things for which they feel no remorse). That he didn;t come out
and say "I'm sorry I cooperated and named names" doesn't seem
particularly meaningful, to me at least. I think the same point is made
by his assertions that he had no real choice in the matter and that his
actions didn't change the outcome for anyone involved. You seem to want
a tearful "I have sinned against you" while I'm comfortable with "I had
no real choice in the matter." There's no question that he didn't do
what he did willingly; how far do you need the man to prostrate himself?
Jacques E. Bouchard
news:az941-B69700....@individual.net:
>> If the argument was that he was coerced, then he should at
>> least
>> express regret.
>
> Says who? You?
>
> Who died and made you the final arbiter of this stuff?
Its quite simple: you screw people and sell them down the river,
you show a minimum of decency and apologize.
> Kazan wasn't able to just name a list of names and then tell the HUAC
> to f*ck off; he was forced to cooperate. There was a chunk of time
> during which he still could have gotten into a lot of serious,
> career-ending trouble had he made a big deal out of opposing the HUAC.
So, instead, he ended other people's careers. And now you want us
to feel compassion for him more than for those who had the courage of
their convictions? Please...
Why are you so desperate to excuse his actions?.
jaybee
WRabkin
>> Kazan named turned himself in the day before the hearing, they'd still
>demand
>> he name names.
>
>You don't - can't - know that, any more than I know that Kazan would
>have been deported had he refused to cooperate.
>
history on the period. HUAC would bargain with high-profile witnesses, give
them lists of people who had already been named, because they wanted the "get"
of having an Elia Kazan turn on them.
This isn't speculation, it's history.
geoff alexander
This is a false analogy. Being a current or former member of the
Communist party was not a crime. It's more like this:
A madman in the U.S. government decides that Catholics are
infiltrating the government, and reporting back to their masters in
the Vatican. He forms a committee intended to villify and demonize
Catholics, despite the fact that 99.9% are decent, loyal Americans.
I'm a Catholic, and you know it. Do you participate in a televised
kangaroo court intended to out me as a Catholic, though you know my
beliefs are no threat to the government or the people? Or do you
denounce the proceedings for what they are, a paranoia fueled with
hunt? If you're brave and principled, you know the answer. If
your're not, you know the answer and you participate anyway.
G
WRabkin
>choice, to try and hide when it was clear they'd already been found out
>(and yes, I know that what was found out about them shouldn't have made
>any difference; they didn't actually do anything wrong) even less brave
>than Kazan's choice to cooperate, under protest, and confirm for the
>record information that already needed no additional confirmation. It's
>like they were already fatally wounded, but still blame Kazan for not
>throwing himself in front of bullet #7. Bullets 1-6 had already done
>the job, why should he have to sacrifice himself?
>
out." The committee already had lots of names from anti-Fascist petitions
signed in the 30s.
These people refused to testify -- at least, many of them -- because the
believed (rightly) that a Congressional committee had no right under the
Constitution to force people to testify about their political beliefs. They
believed it was a dangerous violation of their First Amendment rights. They
were standing for a principle.
Now please understand, I'm not debating Kazan's choice. He was placed in a
terrible position and forced to choose between two unacceptable options. I hope
I'd have more courage than he did, but I hope also never to be tested that way.
But the fact is, we DO judge people on how they act in terrible situations.
It's kind of what defines a man's character.
geoff alexander
> Mysi, *AGAIN* you are grossly misinformed! Elia Kazan was Greek by
> HERITAGE, Turkish by BIRTH! Had he been deported, he would have been
> deported to Turkey.
>
> Yes. I do know a little something about Young Turks. I knew a few,
> though they were no longer young, when I lived in Turkey in the late
> 1950s and all of 1960. In the 1960 coup d'etat, a dear friend's
> father, whom I had met a few times and we were neighbors as well, was
> executed for being friends with Menderes, the deposed prime minister.
> Omar was politically opposed, but he and Menderes had been friends
> since childhood and attended university together, and Omar -- who was
> a senator -- had once flown to a meeting with Prime Minister Menderes
> in his private plane. For that, he was executed by hanging, and
> nothing his son or anyone else could do about it. I honest to god
> *DO* know something about Turkish politics of the time, and believe
> me, being deported to Turkey was NOT a viable option for Kazan under
> *any* circumstances.
>
> But I do find your total lack of compassion for Kazan disheartening.
> No one is saying he did the right thing. We are saying, that given
> the circumstances, he didn't have a chioce.
Huh? He didn't have a choice? That's ridiculous. It just wasn't an easy one.
G
Ron
"Jacques E. Bouchard" <jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> If the argument was that he was coerced, then he should at least
> express regret.
>
I'm not sure what, exactly, you would have liked to hear him say. Check
out his autobiography, because he says a lot in it on the subject.
-Ron
Ron
"Jacques E. Bouchard" <jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> Its quite simple: you screw people and sell them down the river,
> you show a minimum of decency and apologize.
If it's true that the committee had all the names he eventually listed,
who, exactly, did he sell down the river?
-Ron
Steven J. Weller
geoffale...@hotmail.com (geoff alexander) wrote:
> > You do something that can get you into serious trouble. I know about
> > it. The police come to me because they know I know about it. Not
> > telling them what I know will get me into serious trouble - every bit as
> > serious as the trouble you'll get into if I _do_ tell.
> >
> > I have two choices. I can tell, save myself, and get you into trouble.
> > I can not tell, save you (hopefully), and get myself into trouble.
> > That's pretty much the list.
>
> This is a false analogy. Being a current or former member of the
> Communist party was not a crime.
Never said it was; in fact, have said exactly the opposite.
My analogy never mentions a crime. I just point out that what the
people in question did, way back then, became something that could get
them in a lot of trouble.
Are you saying that this characerization is inaccurate?
> It's more like this:
>
> A madman in the U.S. government decides that Catholics are
> infiltrating the government, and reporting back to their masters in
> the Vatican. He forms a committee intended to villify and demonize
> Catholics, despite the fact that 99.9% are decent, loyal Americans.
> I'm a Catholic, and you know it. Do you participate in a televised
> kangaroo court intended to out me as a Catholic, though you know my
> beliefs are no threat to the government or the people? Or do you
> denounce the proceedings for what they are, a paranoia fueled with
> hunt? If you're brave and principled, you know the answer. If
> your're not, you know the answer and you participate anyway.
Are you saying that you would, in the tradition of Paul, deny your faith
and your God out of political expedience? Are you so ashamed of your
beliefs that someone would have to _out_ you?
That's my point about Kazan and the people he named. He didn't want to
be there and he didn't want to have to make that choice. But like your
Catholicism, the people in question's political affiliations were hardly
a secret. He didn't "out" anyone who wasn't already out.
Given that, it comes down to, do you participate in a meaningless
kangaroo court, retain your citizenship and family and career, and choke
back the bile until you have a chance to make an artistic statement
about it in a film or two, or do you say that this madman's insane quest
is worth your life and livelihood and fall on your proverbial sword,
knowing that doing so a) won't save anybody, and b) will also give the
madman a victory, though of a different kind ("look at what happens to
people who don't cooperate - Kazan's back in Istanbul, never to make a
movie again. Wanna rethink answering the Committee's questions?")
Steven J. Weller
wra...@aol.com (WRabkin) wrote:
Nonsense, and I'm sure you know it. If all of the people on Kazan's
list beat him to the punch, getting Kazan to testify would have been
meaningless. There would have been no moral quandry because there would
have been no point in the charade. "Mr. Kazan, what about <<blank>>?"
"Well, Senator, I believe <<blank>> wrote an op-ed piece for the New
York Times, that was published yesterday, stating that is, in fact, a
Communist. I have no reason to doubt his word on the subject; he would
certainly know better about that than I would."
What's the point of replaying that, nine more times? You can't out
someone who's already out.
Steven J. Weller
"Jacques E. Bouchard" <jebouchard451R*E*M*O*V*E*M*E...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
> "Steven J. Weller" <az...@lafn.org> wrote in
> news:az941-B69700....@individual.net:
>
> > Kazan wasn't able to just name a list of names and then tell the HUAC
> > to f*ck off; he was forced to cooperate. There was a chunk of time
> > during which he still could have gotten into a lot of serious,
> > career-ending trouble had he made a big deal out of opposing the HUAC.
>
> So, instead, he ended other people's careers. And now you want us
> to feel compassion for him more than for those who had the courage of
> their convictions? Please...
>
> Why are you so desperate to excuse his actions?
Why are you so desperate to condemn them? The other people's careers
were already ended, that's the point. The list of names came from the
HUAC; they didn't need his cooperation to end their careers. That
process was already in motion, and wasn't going to be stopped by Kazan
sacrificing himself. Where is his moral obligation to fall on his
sword, to "save" people who were already lost? Why didn't the people in
question have a similar obligation to save their friend, who actually
could have been saved?
It would have been incredibly brave and noble of Kazan to sacrifice
himself for the ideal. I'm just not ready to condemn him for not doing
so.
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen)
Do either of you -- Bill or Steven, or anyone else for that matter --
think it would be more difficult for someone who had lived under a
totalitarian government that used and relished *extreme* citizen abuse
to refuse to cooperate with HUAC than someone who was born and raised
under the U.S. Constition and Bill of Rights?
Caroline
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen)
alexander) wrote:
Geoff, with all due respect, I am seventy years old and I lived
through the McCarthy/HUAC years. I also lived in Turkey at a time
when the government was quite harsh, and in a section of that country
that was under marshall law, meaning the Turkish military had absolute
power. I have seen hanged bodies swinging from bridges and in public
squares left for days as cautionary examples on a regular basis. This
in a country dominated by a religion that dictates a believer should
be buried by sundown on the day he dies. I have seen people who were
maimed for life as a result of "interrogation." Given my realm of
experience in both countries, I say Kazan did not have a choice.
Answers are always easy fifty years from home plate.
Caroline
Otto Mation (Caroline Freisen)
<az...@lafn.org> wrote:
>In article <20040621002332...@mb-m03.aol.com>,
> wra...@aol.com (WRabkin) wrote:
>
>> >And if everyone
>> >> Kazan named turned himself in the day before the hearing, they'd still
>> >demand
>> >> he name names.
>> >
>> >You don't - can't - know that, any more than I know that Kazan would
>> >have been deported had he refused to cooperate.
>> >
>> Of course I can know this and I do know this, because I've read a lot of
>> history on the period. HUAC would bargain with high-profile witnesses, give
>> them lists of people who had already been named, because they wanted the "get"
>> of having an Elia Kazan turn on them.
>>
>> This isn't speculation, it's history.
>
>Nonsense, and I'm sure you know it. If all of the people on Kazan's
>list beat him to the punch, getting Kazan to testify would have been
>meaningless.
Theoretically I agree with you, Steven. I think you know that.
But the reality of the times was that the ONLY goal of Senator Joseph
McCarthy and his House Un-American Activities Committee was power. I
don't know if a public record remains disclosing how many people
stepped forward and asked to testify. But I do know with certainty
that if they and what they wanted to say did not serve the purpose of
the HUAC, they were not allowed a public hearing. EVERYTHING was
micro-stage-managed to meet their power goal.
Caroline
Jacques E. Bouchard
news:ronaldinho_m-0C08...@individual.net:
That sort of witch hunt relies on informants. It stops working when
everyone (or most everyone) refuses to participate.
jaybee
Jacques E. Bouchard
> Why are you so desperate to condemn them? The other people's careers
> were already ended, that's the point. The list of names came from the
> HUAC; they didn't need his cooperation to end their careers. That
> process was already in motion, and wasn't going to be stopped by Kazan
> sacrificing himself. Where is his moral obligation to fall on his
> sword, to "save" people who were already lost? Why didn't the people
> in question have a similar obligation to save their friend, who
> actually could have been saved?
He had already admitted to his former activities within the
communist movement (to whatever extent it might have been). What bothers
me is the fact that he accepted selling out others in order to somewhat
reduce his own "punishment".
He and others like him were directly responsible for allowing the
HUAC to do as much harm as itdid, by being willing accomplicesd in a
witch hunt.
jaybee
Jacques E. Bouchard
> Geoff, with all due respect, I am seventy years old and I lived
> through the McCarthy/HUAC years. I also lived in Turkey at a time
> when the government was quite harsh, and in a section of that country
> that was under marshall law, meaning the Turkish military had absolute
> power. I have seen hanged bodies swinging from bridges and in public
> squares left for days as cautionary examples on a regular basis. This
> in a country dominated by a religion that dictates a believer should
> be buried by sundown on the day he dies. I have seen people who were
> maimed for life as a result of "interrogation." Given my realm of
> experience in both countries, I say Kazan did not have a choice.
Caroline, wiht all due respect for your life experience, I really
fail to see how one follows the other. On the contrary, it makes Kazan's
"choice" even more trivial, because he dod NOT live in a totalitarian
regime threatening to have him executed.
jaybee